Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Hope For the Sideline Christian

Buried deep inside the 70-verse list of returned exiles in Ezra 2 resides the story of a clerical error any reader who has spent the day at the DMV can readily identify with and benefit from.

Desiring be a part of God’s supernatural work, the sons of Barzillai travel to Jerusalem to serve as priests in the new temple. But before they can pass go, the Jewish state presses pause on their application because of an administrative error. Ezra 2:62 reports, “These sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not found there, and so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.” Though this providential clerical error undoubtedly discouraged the sons of Barillai, it also conveys a beautiful truth that promises to encourage all Christians: namely, that Christians can glorify God irrespective of where and how they serve in God’s kingdom.

When God Redirects

While the passage unquestionably speaks to a congregation’s need to guard the offices of the church from being corrupted by unqualified men as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 affirm, it also speaks to those members who can no longer serve prominently in their local church. Though they desire to oversee a Sunday school class, disciple new mom, or serve as the deacon over facilities, they awake one day only to discover that God’s divine providence has put an end to their service. For some, old age and failing health rob them of the strength needed to keep teaching. For others, the arrival of their first child redirects their discipleship time to diapers and sleep schedules. For others, caring for a loved one battling cancer consumes all the energy that would have gone toward changing the shut-in’s air filters and light bulbs. Like the sons of Barzillai, Christians can find themselves barred from ministry. They have not openly violated God’s law and offered unholy sacrifices as the faithless priests had done in Leviticus 10. Rather, God’s providence which surpass human understanding had prevented their service.   

Always for Glory

When God directs Christians out of public ministry, they can be tempted to complain about and disparage their new setting. Like the saints in Ezra 3:13 who mourned the construction of the second temple because they feared it would not be as physically glorious as the first temple, today’s sidelined Christians can be tempted to fear that their new season of less or different activity will bring God less glory than previous years of service.

Thankfully, the opposite is true. The believer’s ability to glorify God is not tied to his or her station in church but to being part of God’s people. The Lord stirred and directed the sons of Barzillai just as much as he stirred Jeshua and Zerubbabel who played a prominent part in the temple’s reconstruction. God called all of them to Jerusalem and assigned all of them to the place that he providentially knew would be best for them and his kingdom. What brought God glory was not the size or prominence of an exile’s post but his faithfulness in that post. God is just as glorified in the faithful prayers of the dear saint in her nursing home bed as he is by the prayers of elder standing behind the pulpit.

Consequently, when God directs men and women out of more prominent ministry roles, he is not sidelining them or putting them out to pasture. He is repurposing them. P.B. Powers rightfully offered the following encouragement to the chronically ill: “Sick man, you have a place of usefulness for God, not the old place, but his place – the place which is best in the eyes of the all-wise one (39).” For some, that service may take the form of prayer. For others, that may take the form of writing encouraging notes and emails. For others, that may take the form of listening to and glorifying God through reading, listening to sermons, and singing hymns.

Lloyd-Jones Agrees

At the end of his life, the famed twentieth-century preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones found himself sidelined from the pulpit because of his ongoing battle with cancer. Though many of his contemporaries assumed that Lloyd-Jones would be distraught over this change, Lloyd-Jones’ friend Ian Murray reported the opposite to be true. Lloyd-Jones told Murray, “Now I can pray for you men…People say to me it must be very trying for you not to be able to preach – No! Not at all! I was not living upon preaching.” In other words, Lloyd-Jones had no reason to be discouraged for God was just as glorified by Lloyd-Jones’ public preaching to thousands as he was in Lloyd-Jones’ private praying for tens and hundreds. In this sense, no believer can be truly sidelined from ministry for the Lord has designed every act of worship in every setting to glorify him. As Paul notes in Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ.”

Final Thoughts

In short, all stations in life and the corresponding ministry are designed to glorify God. The eight-year-old bouncing through kids ministry by faith, the forty-year-old preaching to jam-packed auditoriums by faith, and as an eighty-year-old shuffling between chairs by faith can and do glorify God. To quote Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Moreover, God will always direct us to the place that is best for our soul and that will most glorify him even if he must move us about through a clerical error or cancer. Even in those moments, Christians can rest assured that God is working all things together for their good.

Dear believer, if you feel sidelined, take heart. You have not been sidelined but redeployed for the glory of God. 

Peter Witkowski Church History, Discipleship

From Sermon to Life: The Powerful Story of Lloyd-Jones and Stott’s Reconciliaiton

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who led Westminster Chapel through World War II and a large part of the Cold War, was the epitome of biblical faithfulness in the pulpit. When a V-2 rocket exploded next to his church and anointed him and his congregation with a fine coat of ceiling dust, he brushed off the dust, took a quick break, and then continued with his sermon. Nothing could deter Lloyd-Jones from preaching the gospel of his Lord and Savior. As the Welsh pastor noted during a Cold War era sermon, “The greatest trouble in the world is not the nuclear bomb but humanity’s rejection of the Gospel.” As he said in another sermon, the gospel is “the one and only remedy that can cure the disease which is the cause of all our local and particular problems.” And so, he preached that truth in both the best and worst of times.

A Man of Integrity

What was true of the Doctor in his famous pulpit was also true of him in the quiet recesses of his home. As his reconciliation with the Anglican pastor John Stott would make clear, Lloyd-Jones lived out gospel convictions just as faithfully in private as he did in public.

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In a sermon preached during his rise to fame in 1949, Lloyd-Jones warned his audience against the bitterness of unforgiveness. To illustrate his point, Lloyd-Jones recounted a story about two men who sought to be reconciled with one of their former pastors who was on his deathbed. Lloyd-Jones recalled:

So they took the journey, and they arrived at his house. His wife went up into the bedroom and told him they were there, but he refused to see them. I could not do that! How could I go out and face God in eternity and my whole eternal destiny and refuse to forgive a man who came to me with an outstretched hand?

In contrast to the man in the story, Lloyd-Jones understood that those who had been forgiven had to forgive.

When Lloyd-Jones preached this on 1 John 4, he was still more than thirty years away from his death and was enjoying a budding relationship with Stott, a minister who shared the Doctor’s passion for expository preaching, evangelism, and discipling the next generation. Lloyd-Jones so valued Stott’s friendship and insights into the Scriptures that the Doctor asked Stott to take over Westminster Chapel upon his retirement.

A Conflict

But then on October 18, 1966, their relationship unexpectedly soured. That night at the Second National Assembly of Evangelicals (NAE), Lloyd-Jones delivered a powerful address, calling for British evangelicals to exit liberal denominations that allowed for the denial of essential doctrines, such as justification by faith alone. As Lloyd-Jones noted, “To leave a church which has become apostate is not schism. That’s one’s Christian duty and nothing else.” Lloyd-Jones hoped his call for gospel unity built upon gospel purity would spark an evangelical revival. The Welsh pastor said, “If those of us who believe it [the Word of God] only come together … I believe we would then have the right to expect the Spirit of God to come upon us in mighty revival and re-awakening.”

Stott who shared the stage with Lloyd-Jones held the opposite view. The Anglican pastor believed that evangelicals should stay in their liberalizing denominations for the purpose of winning them back to truth.

When the Doctor’s address concluded, Stott rose to speak. But before turning to his official duties as chairman of the NAE, Stott broke professional protocol. He criticized the Doctor’s appeal, fearing that those pastors attending the NAE would, in Stott’s words, “go home and write their letter of resignation that very night.”

Stott offered the following critique of his friend:

I believe history is against what Dr. Lloyd-Jones has said…Scripture is against him, the remnant was within the church not outside it. I hope no one will act precipitately…We are all concerned with the same ultimate issues and with the glory of God.

With his words, Stott prevented the resignations he so feared, muted his friend’s influence in the British Evangelical movement, and shattered his close ties with Lloyd-Jones.

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A few weeks later, Stott apologized to Lloyd-Jones for his lack of decorum. Though Stott claimed that he and the doctor maintained “a warm personal relationship,” in the years after 1966, the events of October 18 continued to nag at Stott. According to Lloyd-Jones’ wife, Bethan, Stott arrived at Lloyd-Jones’ hospital room two years later in tears. The Anglican pastor feared that his rebuke had contributed to Lloyd-Jones’ cancer diagnosis. Bethan quickly brushed off Stott’s fears as silly and guided Stott into the Doctor’s hospital room. Still, the events of that night and their subsequent fallout had in the words of one historian resulted in the marginalization of Lloyd-Jones’ voice within the evangelical movement. And they continued to occupy space in Stott’s mind.

From Illustration to Life

In 1978, Stott sensed that the window to restore his friendship with the Doctor was closing and once again sought out his old friend. In the words of Stott’s biographer, the Anglican pastor traveled to Lloyd-Jones’ home hoping to “build bridges and to repair a friendship.”

In so doing, he transformed Lloyd-Jones’ illustration into the Doctor’s reality.  Would he forgive?

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When Stott arrived at Lloyd-Jones’ house, Bethan in concert with Lloyd-Jones’ wishes, escorted Stott into the Doctor’s study.

There, Stott encountered not coldness and anger but kindness and forgiveness. Stott said of his friend’s reception of him, “[Lloyd-Jones] could not have been more affable and welcoming.” After talking about their shared passion for the book of Ephesians (both preached through the book and would publish volumes on it), the two men waded into the old wounds of 1966. As they did so, Lloyd-Jones extended love and reconciliation to Stott. Lloyd-Jones told his old friend, “If God spares me, and we could be together, I’d say like Simeon, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.’” By God’s mercy, Lloyd-Jones proved himself to be the same man in his study at the end of his life as he was in the pulpit as he rose to popularity. As the Doctor said back in 1949: “This truth is given to me that I may live by it and that I may experience in my life in all the power and grace and glory.” And so by God’s grace, Lloyd-Jones lived what he preached in some of his most public of moments in some of his most intimate ones.

A Genuine Act

Though I have been able to pull out this thread of gospel faithfulness from Lloyd-Jones’ life, I doubt that the Welsh pastor was ever so self-aware. Lloyd-Jones preached thousands of sermons. Admittedly, he edited many of them for publication in his final years. But, he never turned his attention to his sermons on 1 John. His family would compile, edit, and publish those volumes after the Doctor’s death. I have no reason to think that Lloyd-Jones was especially aware of the contents of his 1 John sermons when he met with Stott for the last time. After all, the two friends talked about the book of Ephesians and not John’s epistle. Moreover, the accounts of Lloyd-Jones’ last visit with Stott originate from Stott and others and not with Lloyd-Jones. I believe, Lloyd-Jones saw his meeting with Stott as nothing more than a meeting between old friends.

Rather, I suspect Lloyd-Jones’ actions arose not from self-awareness but from his ever-deepening experience of God’s mercy and grace. As Lloyd-Jones told his friend and first biographer, Iain Murray, during the last weeks of his life:

When you come to where I am, there is only one thing that matters, that is your relationship to Him and your knowledge of him. Nothing else matters…Our best works are tainted. We are sinners saved by grace. We are debtors to mercy alone…God is very patient with us and very kind and He suffers our evil manners like He did with the children of Israel…The Love of God!

In other words, the man who had “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified” written on his tombstone could not help but love others as he had been loved. In short, he was a man of the gospel.

Conclusion

May God grant us all such consistency. May we live out the gospel of forgiveness in private with the same fervency we speak of it in public. May all who pull the threads of our life find such faithfulness.

Peter Witkowski Book Reviews

Life In Two Kingdoms: A Review

The seas of political and cultural engagement have proved treacherous for the Christian soul. If it sails too close to the shore of faith, it can run aground upon the reefs of non-involvement. But if it sails into the depths of secular thinking, it can drown in a whirlpool of political partisanship. Both a lack of involvement in the world and an over preoccupation with politics can harm both the Christian and his or her witness to this lost and dying world.

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In the span of 322 pages, Doctor Martyn Lloyd-Jones charts a path through these dangerous waters that is guided by his exegesis of Romans 13. The passage serves as a compass for his view of limited cultural engagement, a view that both promotes Christian involvement in the secular world and protects the believer from being consumed by political platforms.

Overview

Lloyd-Jones or the Doctor (he was an MD prior to entering the pulpit and happily would look after one’s physical body as well as one’s soul when asked) believed Christians should engage the political and secular world because God had instituted both culture and government and remained involved in the workings of men and women. Since God had ordained the state to promote human flourishing and to restrain evil, Christians could vote, serve in parliament, and overthrow unjust political institutions that used their power to abuse and harm citizens.

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But such political and social involvement was never to become the believer’s guiding star. All governments remained concerned with the limitation of sin. The State could not positively legislate the Sermon on the Mount because gospel change flowed through the channel of the church in accordance with the faithful preaching of the gospel. Membership in the Church and the expansion of God’s kingdom depended upon one’s spiritual birth. Rebirth remained untethered to that person’s earthly citizenship and family heritage. After providing a somewhat oversimplified history of how the Church and state have interacted through the ages, the Doctor rightfully concluded that the state should not dominate the doctrines of the Church nor should the Church control the politics of the state. When the separate spheres of the state and the church were foraged into one distorted circle, the witness of the Church would begin to rot.

Because of sin, the Church could never advance through the state, protests, or cultural institutions. Though the Christian was to care for his or her neighbors, he or she was always to remember that only the gospel could overcome sin and bring lasting change. The local pastor was not to tell politicians how to best care for their citizens. The Church had no special insights into how to best regulate speed limits, drainage problems, or international trade. But she did possess the gospel of Jesus Christ which showed men and women their sin, pointed them to salvation, and then laid out the principles by which Christians could live loving and just lives. Instead of organizing marches, Lloyd-Jones called the local church to declare the “principles” that governed life. As the Doctor concluded,

“It is always wrong to talk about Christianizing anything. No such thing is possible.”

Instead of campaigning, preach.

The Doctor spent the second half of the book discussing the second coming of Christ. He showed readers the necessity of Christian suffering, the predictableness of human failure, and the hope of Jesus’s return. The Christian was not to think in terms of political cycles or sports seasons but in terms of eternity. Jesus would one day return to liberate the world from the curse of the fall. All other efforts to establish world peace and to final reform society would fail. Only the gospel could change the soul. And only the return of Christ would bring the gospel to bear on the entire universe. The Christian lived for eternity!   

Conclusion

The Doctor first shared the thoughts that became this book in a series of lectures that ran from November 1966 to May 1967 in his church located in London. Though Lloyd-Jones’s words are more than 50 years old, they prove ever relevant because they direct the reader’s soul back to the gospel. Moreover, like a good bottle of port stashed in a ship’s hull, the Doctor’s words have become sweeter and more poignant with age. Lloyd-Jones’s ideas reside in the realms of principle and cannot be dragged down into the particulars of any modern political debate. Readers do not have to fear that the Doctor has some hidden agenda or favorite candidate to prop up. In an age of rushed opinions and unrelenting political fury, Lloyd-Jones’s books serves as a harbor of refuge where readers may safely consider how to best bring the gospel to bear upon their political and cultural system. Even if you reject the Doctor’s view of limited political engagement, his arguments will undoubtedly help you chart your own voyage through these shifting waters.

If you only read one book this year, I encourage you to make it the The Exposition of Chapter 13: Life in Two Kingdoms.

May we all make it safely to Jordan’s Sunny shores.