Honey from the Rock: Daily Devotions from Young Kuyper

By Abraham Kuyper

Communion with the Lord is sweeter than honey.

In his meditations, Abraham Kuyper reveals a side of himself unseen in his well--known theological writings. First published in 1880 and 1883 and never before translated in English, the devotions in Honey from the Rock were written for the nourishment and health of his soul. Rather than the public figure and theologian, we see a man thirsting and hungering for God's presence. Modern readers entering this sacred space will be spiritually renewed, restored, and replenished by the light of God's Word, before returning to our daily callings. James De Jong introduces these powerful devotions from Kuyper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Nov 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781683592358

Abraham Kuyper

Abraham Kuyper (1937-1920) was a prominent Dutch Calvinist theologian, politician, educator, and writer. His thinking has influenced the Neo-Calvinist movement in the United States and Canada. Many of his writings, including Pro Rege, have never been translated into English.

Book preview

ABRAHAM KUYPER

HONEY FROM THE ROCK

DAILY DEVOTIONS FROM YOUNG KUYPER

TRANSLATED BY

JAMES A. DE JONG

Honey From the Rock: Daily Devotions from Young Kuyper

Copyright 2018 Dutch Reformed Translation Society

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail].

Original Dutch edition: Honig uit den Rotssteen, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Wormser, 1880; Amsterdam & Pretoria: Höveker & Wormser, 1883).

Print ISBN 9781683592341

Digital ISBN 9781683592358

Lexham Editorial Team: Claire Brubaker, Todd Hains, and Christy Callahan

Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

CONTENTS

Translator’s Preface

VOLUME I

1: Like a Weaned Child

2: The Foxes Have Holes

3: For He Is So Small

4: For All These Many Years

5: The Extension of Your Tranquility

6: Yet, Because He Is Persistent

7: Unmarked Graves

8: Proper Portions at Just the Right Time

9: Come to Bring Fire on the Earth

10: Set Free on the Sabbath

11: Wallets That Never Wear Out

12: Worse Sinners than All Other Galileans

13: The Poor and Needy!

14: A Cloud of Witnesses

15: Those Who Were Greedy

16: Unworthy Servants

17: Impossible with Men

18: Everything Fulfilled

19: The Hem of His Robe

20: All She Had to Live On

21: On the Peak of the Temple

22: Their Quiet Prayer

23: Instead of a Thistle a Myrtle

24: And the Children Gather Wood Together

25: A White Stone

26: A Pillar in the Temple

27: Not Filled with Sweet Wine

28: Wisdom Made Foolish

29: Beds and Cribs

30: Take Note of Him

31: Contrary to Sound Doctrine

32: Lovely Thoughts

33: Walk in the Light of Your Fire!

34: How the Gold Has Lost Its Luster!

35: Crumbs from the Table!

36: Anointed with New Oil

37: Take the Shoes off Your Feet

38: Uncircumcised of Heart

39: Go Out into the Main Roads

40: Lord, Teach Us How to Pray

41: The Fruit of Lips

42: Unify My Heart

43: Light Is Sown for the Righteous

44: You Who Carry the Lord’s Vessels

45: Children of the Resurrection

46: He Passed Away to No One’s Regret

47: And Sets on Fire the Wheel of Our Birth

48: Those Who Walk Uprightly

49: All the Intents of His Heart Are Only Evil

50: They Don’t Know What They Do

51: Untie the Knots of Wickedness

52: We Fumble along in the Middle of the Day

53: Your Iniquities Cause Division!

54: A Jeweled Crown Instead of Ashes

55: Like a Flower of the Field

56: Peace on Earth!

57: Refining Silver

58: This Is Why I Gave Them My Sabbaths

59: Changing Direction at His Command

60: I Will Pay Them Back in Their Bosom

61: He Himself Does Not Know How

62: The Person Who Trembles at My Word

63: My Food Is To Complete His Work

64: One Sows and Another Reaps

65: All Judgment Given to the Son

66: The Firstfruit of His Harvest

67: Because You Ate Some of this Bread

68: Distressed!

69: Wash Away the Old Yeast

70: Those Who Cannot Keep Their Souls Alive

71: We Have Been Raised with Him

72: Staying and Belonging

73: By One Man

74: Doing God’s Work

75: Ascending to Where He Was Before

76: A God Who Hides Himself

77: Definitely Blessed

78: The Sins of My Youth

79: You Set Me before Your Face Forever

80: You Do Not Support the Root, but the Root Supports You

81: I Am Against You

82: The Hands of Zalmunna

83: Two or Three Seen at the Top of the Highest Branch

84: Disloyal to the Generations of Your Children

85: Empty, Swept Clean, and Nicely Decorated

86: You Are like Gilead to Me, and like the Heights of Lebanon

87: Having Fallen Asleep

88: Even the Rebellious Live in Your Presence

89: Like a Lost Sheep

90: Forgiveness and the Fear of the Lord

91: Living by Faith

92: Very Slippery Places in the Dark

93: The Fruit of the Spirit

94: Two Baskets of Figs

95: Brokenhearted

96: Now These Three Remain

97: Needful That Stumbling Comes

98: They Thought They Would Receive More

99: A House of Prayer

100: Stay Awake

VOLUME II

1: Keeping Watch over Their Flock at Night

2: You Completely Transform His Illness

3: Ask about the Ancient Ways

4: From the Seeds to the Skin

5: Our Daily Bread

6: Your Children Have Forsaken Me

7: Living with Hostility toward the Lord

8: If You Abide in My Word

9: Heartless!

10: A Murderer from the Beginning

11: In the Spirit on the Lord’s Day

12: Like a Deaf Viper

13: That Grace Might Increase

14: And Scripture Can Never Be Broken

15: And He Was Troubled

16: He Lives to Make Intercession for Them

17: Draw Them All to Me

18: Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

19: The Heart Humbled by Hard Labor

20: Your Just Due!

21: Remember the Sabbath Day

22: The Lord Is Your Keeper!

23: Bearing the Weakness of the Weak!

24: The Gold Is Mine!

25: Your Healing Will Happen Quickly

26: Don’t Pray for These People!

27: Wherever the Spirit Went, They Went

28: How You Despise Your Brother

29: And I Also Am at Work

30: Because I Will Show You No Grace

31: With an Iron Point!

32: Taking Up One’s Cross

33: To Sift You like Wheat

34: In the Judgment Hall

35: Like a Green Olive Tree in God’s House

36: Upright in Heart

37: My Abundance

38: Until I Visit Him!

39: The Neck and Not the Face

40: I Shall Not Want

41: Come, Buy and Eat!

42: If We Say!

43: That We Have Fellowship with Him!

44: And Walk in Darkness!

45: We Lie and Do Not Do the Truth!

46: You Are Smelting My Inner Being!

47: The Law Will Go Out from Zion

48: Covered Up!

49: Then Your Peace Would Have Flowed like a River!

50: Don’t Withhold Discipline from a Child

51: A Worm and Not a Man

52: I Am Poured Out like Water

53: Eli, Eli, Lamma Sabachthani!

54: The Effort of His Soul

55: The Lord of Hosts

56: Renew a Steadfast Spirit in My Inmost Parts!

57: They Touch the Apple of His Eye!

58: A Clean Turban on His Head

59: Tongues as of Fire

60: He Himself Knew What Was in a Man

61: A God Who Shows His Wrath Every Day

62: Poured Undiluted!

63: Do Not Neglect the Work of Your Hands

64: This People Says, The Time Has Not Yet Come

65: May Love Be Multiplied to You

66: And the God of Peace Will Himself Sanctify You Completely

67: Get Behind Me, Satan!

68: It Covers All Things

69: Important People Are a Lie!

70: When You Fasted, Was It in Any Way for Me?

71: Who Is the Man Who Fears the Lord?

72: Even Christ Did Not Exalt Himself by Becoming a High Priest

73: Majestic like a Horse

74: Although They Were Dreadful Sheep!

75: So Then Neither He Who Plants nor He Who Waters Is Anything!

76: Unending Pain in My Heart!

77: I Will Spit You Out of My Mouth

78: Keren-Happuch

79: Ministering Daily

80: But I Am of the Flesh, Sold into Sin’s Bondage!

81: So That Glory May Dwell in Our Land

82: Lambs among Wolves

83: All That God Has Prepared

84: Our Redeemer from of Old Is Your Name!

85: You Priests Who Despise My Name

86: How Have We Despised Your Name?

87: Trouble and Sorrow

88: Maintaining That His Own Strength Is His God

89: Then All the Arrogant Will Be like Stubble

90: A Quiet Spirit That Is Precious to God

91: Be Lifted Up, You Everlasting Doors

92: Love Poured into Our Hearts through the Holy Spirit

93: By Their Behavior, without Words!

94: Filled with the Knowledge of His Will

95: Christ the Firstfruits

96: Not Only in Words, but Also with Power

97: After I Understood Myself

98: God Searches for What Has Been Driven Away!

99: Those Who Mourn in Zion!

100: An Ox Knows Its Owner!

2018 Dutch Reformed Translation Society Board of Directors

Subject Index

Scripture Index

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

Writing a weekly meditation on Sunday was sacrosanct for Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). He tolerated no compromise of that commitment even during his harried years as prime minister of the Netherlands (1901–1905). While he often delayed or interrupted other writing projects, he never did so with respect to writing his weekly meditation. That pattern prevailed from the early 1870s until several days before his death in November 1920. In fact, in the weeks just preceding the high Christian holidays, he consistently wrote two devotionals. The size of this body of material is enormous. It consists of over twenty-two hundred pieces.

Kuyper’s religious rigor in writing biblically based meditations must be understood as the profoundly spiritual experience it was for him. Sitting alone while quietly reflecting deeply, often imaginatively, on a biblical passage, was an act of communing with God. Such intimate fellowship with his Creator and Redeemer replenished his spirit. It fortified, invigorated, inspired, instructed, and directed him. These benefits of his precious time alone with the Lord flowed from his heart and soul through his gifted pen. They become ours through his meditations.

UNDERSTANDING KUYPER FULLY

One cannot understand Abraham Kuyper apart from his meditations. The more one delves into them, the better one comes to know Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper is famous for his initiatives in Christian journalism. He began a Christian daily newspaper in the early 1870s. He founded and edited an eight-page religious weekly. He was a rigorous advocate for government funding for Christian schools. His vision of a Christian scientific mind compelled him to establish a Christian university. Politics and justice were such important arenas needing faith-based guidance that he exchanged his pastoral office for a political one. Urbanization, industrialization, and colonialism all presented new challenges in a rapidly changing world order that begged for Christlike solutions. So he galvanized the Anti-Revolutionary Party into a passionately dedicated political movement. As a theological professor, he produced major theological works, many now being translated into English for the first time. Kuyper’s amazing stamina and productivity, seen in these initiatives, were nurtured by the spirituality so transparent in his meditations. Kuyper did not wear his heart on his sleeve, but his meditations are the lens through which we are privileged to look into his soul.

A great deal of fine scholarship has been directed recently to Kuyper’s many accomplishments. Much of it has focused on the younger Kuyper during the formative years of his public career—when he began publishing his weekly meditations. They first appeared in the Sunday weekly inserted into his daily newspaper, De Standaard (The Standard). After a few years, that insert became the separately printed religious weekly known as De Heraut (The Herald); it began appearing in December 1877. Remarkably, despite scouring Kuyper’s meditations in these two sources, one looks in vain for Editor Kuyper reprinting one of them there under the duress of a heavy schedule. Over the years, he might produce a meditation on the same text several times, even five or six times. But in such cases, each meditation was the product of a new spiritual encounter with the Lord. Despite the originality of each of Kuyper’s meditations, despite their paramount importance in the weekly rhythm of his life, and despite the convictions and biblical insights they convey, modern scholarship has given Kuyper’s meditations largely only casual acknowledgment. This includes studies on Kuyper during the formative stage of his emerging public career. Fortunately, that is beginning to change.

ABOUT THE HONEY FROM THE ROCK MEDITATIONS

These meditations—originally published as two volumes, in 1880 and 1883 respectively—reflect the younger Kuyper’s spirituality. Volume 1 consists of one hundred meditations written from December 1877 to late 1880. Kuyper reprinted them in the same sequence in which they originally appeared in De Heraut. Volume 2 includes another one hundred meditations that first appeared between May 1879 and mid-1882. For unspecified reasons, he did not reprint them in the same sequence in which they were published in that paper. The two-volume collection was republished only once in the Dutch language, in 1896 (volume 1) and 1897 (volume 2).

The title Honey from the Rock is based on Psalm 81:16: But you will be fed with the finest of wheat. I will satisfy you with honey from the rock.¹ While Kuyper never did write a meditation on this verse, it perfectly captures how he felt about meditating on Scripture. Communion with the Lord is sweet. It feeds the deepest hungers of the human spirit. Spiritual nourishment comes from all parts of the Bible. This collection draws heavily from the Gospels, Psalms, New Testament Letters, and Old Testament Latter Prophets. But it also includes meditations based on passages from the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, and wisdom literature.

The themes and topics in this collection are rather wide ranging. Emphasis on personal assurance based on God’s covenant promises is prominent. So is God’s patience and long-suffering with his often-indifferent people. The power and glory of the Christian life are frequent motifs. Endurance and perseverance in the face of hardship appear consistently. The responsibilities of Christian parenting are regularly treated, as are the sad consequences of neglecting them. Formal, empty, powerless religious practice is often denounced, as are hypocrisy and religious practice for social recognition. The meditations are equally emphatic against cultivating subjective religious experience as the basis for assurance; Kuyper unmasks the spiritual peril of such piety. He is graphic and candid about the power of sin in the lives of Christians as well as among unbelievers. For him, the Devil, sin, and hell are looming realities regularly referenced in his material. He emphasized the ministering power of angels in Christian experience. He stressed the urgency of vibrant Christian community, the Sabbath as a time of sacred refuge and renewal, and the centrality of worship and preaching and sacraments in the ministration of grace. Worldly diversion and the pursuit of material gain and human recognition elicit his warnings. Kuyper does employ theological terms in these meditations: calling, election, adoption, regeneration, sanctification, atonement, and others. But he does so not to teach doctrine; he assumes that readers understand this vocabulary. He uses these terms only to stress the riches of fellowship with God. Kuyper’s handling of his chosen themes and topics, and his occasional use of theological terms, occur in a surprisingly fresh, creative style. His meditations are spiritually gripping and memorable.

Equally important about this collection of meditations is what it does not include. Not found here are urgent calls to Kuyper’s political and social agendas. As he stresses from time to time, meditating and Christian public worship are essential spiritual exercises, in which we leave external preoccupations at the door. Here we enter the sacred space where we consciously stand in the presence of God. Here we search our hearts and souls in the light of his Word. Here we are spiritually renewed, restored, and replenished for returning to our daily callings.

This two-volume set appears here in English translation for the first time. Several meditations in it did find their way into other topical collections of Kuyper meditations that he subsequently published and that have been translated into English. But this involves no more than a half dozen of the two hundred in this set. And their appearance in later Dutch collections and in arcane pre-World War II English translations was not acknowledged as coming from Honey from the Rock.

Because the original two volumes appear here in one volume, original placement is designated in the upper left corner on each meditation’s opening page.

KUYPER’S MEDITATIONS IN CONTEXT

This translation attempts to be completely faithful to the Kuyper text. No attempt is made here to hide the social biases that mark him as a man of his time. It also presents him in readable, contemporary prose. This required breaking apart his inordinately long and intricate sentences, adding an occasional clarifying footnote, and infrequently substituting a contemporary equivalent idiom or term for an arcane Dutch one.

Only one other republished collection of Kuyper meditations is as wide ranging thematically and scripturally as this one. Entitled To Be Near to God, it appeared in 1908 and is a collection of mediations written while and shortly after he was prime minister. They also first appeared in De Heraut and were then republished in book form. Unlike Honey from the Rock, they were soon translated into English and reflect the spirituality of the mature Kuyper.

Six other collections of Kuyper meditations that first appeared in De Heraut and were then republished in book form are shorter and topically focused. They deal with pastoral issues like sickness and death, family life and marriage, Christ’s sufferings and death, and the Christian high holidays. But Honey from the Rock and To Be Near to God are the wide-ranging bookends that bracket all these other more focused collections. While Kuyper continued writing meditations after 1908, none of them were ever gathered and reprinted as collections in book form. Some of the earlier collections were reprinted in the Dutch language, and most of these were eventually translated into English. But by the end of World War II, Abraham Kuyper’s meditations were largely disregarded by readers in both the Dutch and English languages.

The board of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society is grateful to Lexham Press for its collaboration in printing this collection. Its appearance in print now makes Kuyper’s spiritual writing available in addition to his other material now appearing in modern translation.

Special thanks is due to Mr. Paulus Heule for generously underwriting this translation project; he is a former board member of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society and the Honorary Consul of the Netherlands for Western Michigan.

James A. De Jong

Advent 2017

VOLUME I

1

LIKE A WEANED CHILD

Quiet like a weaned child with its mother. Psalm 131:2

A child nursing at its mother’s breast is still living in the initial luxury of its young life. But even in that luxury it’s still unsettled. It always wants the breast again because the breast never fails to provide in abundance. That child feels intensely how much it cherishes the breast, especially when its thirst for its mother’s milk returns.

But now consider the same child after it has gone through the process of being weaned. I’m not thinking about it during the process of being weaned, but after it has been weaned. The time of always crying to be fed has passed. That little child has learned to take a more measured approach to eating. If you set it on its mother’s lap now, it’s no longer drawn to her breast, but it sits there blissfully, simply basking in its mother’s presence!

And isn’t this the way it is for the soul in its transition from the turbulent conversion experience to the sense of peace that follows? Isn’t this similar to the experience of a weaned child? Isn’t the recent convert like a nursing child in always dreaming about the bounty of divine love? By drinking deeply, isn’t it refreshed by its new source of life? Doesn’t it take in more than weak, infant faith can possibly swallow? And in its restless and intense prayer life, isn’t it always asking for an even fuller stream of divine grace?

But then the soul that was initially satiated by such bounty goes through a disillusioning experience. It is weaned from being overly excited, from the excess it enjoyed, and from what is too wonderful for this world. It still focuses on divine love, but it is now a love tempered by Golgotha and the sobering reality of the cross. It now takes the measure of things more dispassionately. A spirit of longer-term expectation replaces one of urgent immediacy. Now it imbibes a sense of what the soul needs to endure. Former unsettledness is replaced by a growing sense of peace. This is like the peace of a child that first drank milk but that has now been weaned from it and asks for its mother as mother. The maturing believer now looks to God as God, and prays with humble entreaty, knowing how very small one’s soul really is.

What we have here is an example of deep dependence. An even greater dependence than that of the little child nursing at the breast is that of one who has been weaned. The little child on the breast is willful. That breast belongs to it! That breast is there for it! The mother’s warm breast is its little kingdom! With its own tongue and little lips it sucks the lukewarm milk! It’s very different for the weaned child. That child has nothing. It discovers that nothing has been prepared. It eats right along with what others eat. And it even lacks the ability to bring to its mouth by itself the food that has been set before it. Its dependence is total!

And is this also how it is for you who have been weaned from the bounty of your first love? Don’t you now feel small and dependent in your heart? You first thought so much was possible! You were so satisfied in your own little kingdom! You were always ready to express yourself on everything. Your lips were always ready to sing God’s praises!

But if you’re honest with yourself, haven’t you now developed appreciation for what’s small? Don’t you take pleasure in the lowly state of God’s servants? In the fact that you encounter opposition? That you’re denied honor and status? That your plans and aspirations fail, so that you now come to enjoy with a joyful heart all with which God has favored you? With a measure of resignation, haven’t you learned to testify with David: O Lord, my heart is not proud. I will not concern myself with things that are too great and wonderful for me. I’m like a weaned child with its mother, and my soul is like a weaned child within me. Israel, hope in the Lord!

Let me say this yet. A mother’s milk is also bread, as Augustine so beautifully put it. But it’s bread that has passed through a mother’s veins and become milk. Bread, therefore, but by derivation. Bread, therefore, but bread first enjoyed by someone else so that the suckling could also enjoy it. Sweetened, weakened, and broken down!

But as soon as the small child is weaned, it gets solid food and it eats actual bread. This is bread that is softened and broken into small pieces. But it is nevertheless bread, bread with all its nourishing elements that make a person strong.

And now isn’t that just the way it happened with you when you were brought to your Savior, who is your Bread of Life? Initially you had more desire for that Bread when it had passed through another person and become for you like mother’s milk for a newborn child. People fed you from Christ, but Christ himself still remained distant to you. The Word was still too difficult for you, too demanding, and too indigestible. Then you had no desire for the Word other than as blended with a sweet little song and as reworked into a very light meal with all the seeds and pits and removed.

But now that you’ve been weaned from the bounty of your first love and have developed a desire for what’s much more modest, you have an appetite for the Bread of Life himself. That’s because you are no longer a newborn child in Christ. Now the hard crust that covers the Word that inside is soft and chewable no longer deters you. Now you patiently bring to your lips the bread of the Word that has such a heavenly, life-giving aroma. And what’s now missing is the mammoth pretense of thinking that you already know everything. All your knowledge in fact fails you! You really know nothing! And crying out from your blindness of soul, you wait for the light from your Only True Love. And in that waiting you sit like a weaned child with its mother, quietly content in the presence of your Lord!

2

THE FOXES HAVE HOLES

The foxes have holes and the birds of the heavens have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Luke 9:58

Isn’t this soul-piercing verse breathtakingly beautiful and deeply moving? The foxes still have their dens, and the birds still have their nests high up in the trees, but I, your Lord Jesus, don’t have a spot where I can rest here on earth! It’s especially beautiful when you note what precedes it and pay attention to what follows it. Then you live into the thought world reflected by this heart-wrenching complaint on Jesus’ lips.

The transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, the heavenly radiance flooding that scene, and Peter’s question about building three tabernacles—one for Moses, one for Elijah, but also one for Jesus (Luke 9:33)—all precede this verse. So does the refusal of the Samaritans to provide lodging for Jesus as he continued his journey to Jerusalem. The result is that he had to spend the night on the cold, hard ground.

Even the fox could dig a den in that ground and find shelter in the heart of the earth. Even the bird could flutter upward, high above that ground, and take refuge there in its nest. But for the Son of Man there was no resting place for his weary head. No resting place, even if a palace opened its gates to him or Peter put up a tabernacle for him. As things were, the earth was definitely suited for the fox and its claws or for the swallow and her wings, but not for Jesus. Not for the Son of Man! He belonged to a higher world, a world whose radiance had enveloped him on Tabor. It is a more perfect world, where no fox can dig his hole and no meadowlark can fly. It is a world where your Lord Jesus offers you what he would win by his soul-absorbing work when once seated on his glorious throne, namely, heartfelt peace and rest with the Father.

It’s not possible for a permanent tabernacle worthy of the Son of Man to exist here on this earth that lies under a curse. When Peter suggested erecting one, says the evangelist, he had no idea what he was saying. Jesus belongs to an order that is too high for this impoverished world. It’s too high not only by virtue of him being God but also because he is the Son of Man. People, like the fox, eventually dig a dark hole in the ground for others. They do this when a person dies, descends into the pit of death, and is carried off to a grave. But now listen to what Jesus says to another inquirer immediately after our verse. He says that for whoever would follow him there is no grave: Let the dead bury their dead, but you go out and proclaim the kingdom of God! Similarly, a person undertakes building a place to live like a bird undertakes the building of its nest. But that house can never be one’s eternal home. Look at how Jesus insistently rejects the following plea: Lord, give me permission first to return and say goodbye to those in my house.

No, no! Remaining here on earth is even less permissible for those redeemed by Jesus than for their Savior himself. They grow into one plant with their Lord and are thus cut off at the root from this world. To live in him is to live outside the world. Like pilgrims on a pilgrimage, they are no longer at home on earth but are on a journey to their real homeland. Whoever finds what they are looking for here below lowers them self beneath their true calling as a human being. They have no fellowship with God’s holy angels, but merely with the foxes, birds, and animals of the forest.

True glory lies in living out the prophetic vow of the Rechabites found in Jeremiah 35:7: We will build no houses for our dwellings, but we will live in tents before the face of the Lord! And the letter to the Hebrews praises the patriarchs for wandering around and living in tents. The apostle advocates a break with this world when he urges wandering in the heavens and leaving behind what is here.

Accordingly, whoever follows Jesus turns his back on the world. She repeatedly finds its charms fading. In her heart and soul she crucifies its glories. She does so not because she relinquishes a desire for happiness, but because she yearns for a greater, higher, richer, and more brilliant glory. In hope, he desires a glory through which already now his quieted heart finds itself swelling with a holy joy. This is joy in the divine splendor and pure luster of God’s kingdom.

When that brilliance once breaks through and the celebrated day finally arrives for which your soul has been longing day and night, O elect child of God, then it will not be the foxes that crawl into their dens. According to the word of the prophet in Isaiah 2:19, it will be those who have not honored the King of Glory here on earth. It will be those who flee into the caves and holes in the ground. Then pain and anguish like that of a woman in childbirth will overcome those who, like the birds of the air, have been driven by haughtiness but who have in fact lowered themselves because they have made their home on the heights of Lebanon and built their nests on the cedar’s branches (Jer 22:23). But for you, for all of you who regarded the world as nothing and were mocked and driven out of it, you will live in the home of the seraphim. The precious word spoken by the Lord himself is for all of you who have suffered pain in your pilgrim wanderings: In the home that is above are many rooms, and a place has been prepared for you there in my Father’s house.

3

FOR HE IS SO SMALL

Lord, Lord, please forgive! How can Jacob possibly survive, for he is so small? Amos 7:2

The Lord’s favor rests on whoever is small, on whoever is despised and discouraged, on whoever is laid low in the dust. O save us, O God! the prophet implores in his anguish, for we no longer amount to anything. We’ve been completely beaten down. Jacob is so small!

That’s the way it is!

The Lord’s anger turns against whatever is exalted. His power is directed against what is haughty and pompous, against all that is lofty. It will all be laid low—every high tower, every solid wall—until people’s pride is broken and their arrogance is trampled!

He has no patience for anyone who takes a spot alongside him or against him. He alone, the Lord our God, will be exalted.

That’s why he shows favor to those who want to be small, make themselves small, and enter his presence as those who are small.

Look at Mary! Didn’t she sing: He has noted the lowly state of his servant? Also consider the tiny baby Jesus himself. It’s even clearer here. He made himself of no account; he humbled himself to the point of dying, even dying on a cross. And for that reason, says the apostle, because he willingly became like a worm in the ground—and only for that reason—his Father was able to comfort him with a surpassing sense of well-being and exalted him highly, giving him a name that is above all names in heaven and on earth.

Is that the controlling principle of your life, my brother and sister? To deny yourself? To willingly become less and less in order that your exalted Head might increase in your life? Listen to the psalmist as he announces: I am small and despised, O Lord! Listen to what Jehovah announces to his people Israel through the multitude of prophets: I will make you small among the nations, O my people; and afterwards I will take pity on you! Note carefully how he produces something glorious out of what is lowly: O Bethlehem Ephrata! You were small among the thousands in Judah. But also note how he ties the promise of consolation to his Exalted One: When the sword is unsheathed against my Shepherd, then I will extend my hand to those who are small.

And as always, God’s elect echo their Amen to all of this! When first made small, they experienced a sense of well-being as well. As long as they remained humble, that sense of well-being was undiminished. It ebbed when their hearts swelled; but it flowed in full measure once they were shattered again.

Become like one of these little children, Jesus said to his disciples in words that ring true, jot and tittle, for you as well as for me. You have to lose your life, not keep it. Self-denial is the marching order that gives you the right to follow him. I am nothing, but you are everything, O Lord, becomes the theme song of a person’s soul.

It’s a source of comfort to you, isn’t it, that you are not counted among the high and mighty or considered as great? Or that you are forgotten here on earth because of your smallness, but that you are highly valued by God because of it. He knows! You have very little power! But, the promise Don’t be afraid, my little flock! is spoken by his divine lips. Oh, everyone who suffers and is oppressed, everyone who is miserable and poor, everyone who is naked or blind, everyone who is helpless and is wandering around abandoned—you have the assurance that your appeal will be heard. Lord, don’t abandon me, Isaiah cries out, for we are so few! The entreaties rising from your heavy heart and oppressed soul, as well as your own piercing cries, you may be sure, will register your complaints before the throne of grace: Lord, God, show me mercy … for I am small!

That infant child lying in a crib was made small in order to make you with your dry, cold, and empty heart great in the kingdom that is above. This Immanuel, lowly and humble, has the power to penetrate your heart ever more frequently and with ever greater depth. He can do this until finally the flame of your own unbelief that still sometimes flares up within you is completely extinguished. On the other hand, he also has the power over the smothered heart not to quench the smoldering wick but to gently blow on it until it bursts into the flame that is a light in the valley of this earth. This is a light of comfort and reassurance.

May the All-Merciful One show you mercy, so that you in turn may show mercy to people who are destitute and oppressed!

May you choose, by examining and discerning your own condition, to show your love to those who are small here on earth! May you open your own heart to those who are despised and rejected! May you be merciful to those who are oppressed and humble! And may you be inclined to listen when people look to you in their lowly circumstances, crying: Help me, my brother or sister, for I am so small!

4

FOR ALL THESE MANY YEARS

I have been serving you now for all these many years. Luke 15:29

Stop for a minute as you begin reading this. Think about something. Before you start a new year, think about how you are living your life before the face of the living God.

You serve him. You are numbered among those who confess his name. You have a personal knowledge of how the Spirit works. And whenever there is talk about the flock that he has chosen, you definitely think of yourself as one of those people who seek his face.

People would do you an injustice if they regarded you as unconverted or grieved over you as an unbeliever. That’s because sometimes you have even been zealous in testifying verbally for the Lord. The Lord’s testimony through the prophet Isaiah can rightly be applied to you: Daily they search me out and desire to know my ways, whether I belong to a people that do what is right and will not forsake God’s righteous ways (Isa 58:2).

But in all of this there is no free pass for you any more than for all the best of your brothers and sisters in the Lord. The question is not whether you serve him, but whether there is any vitality in that service, any faith in that vitality, and any increase in being filled with the Spirit in that faith.

So look deep inside yourself!

For so many years now, you have acted as a doorkeeper in God’s outer courts. Think back on the five, ten, twenty, or even more years that have gone by since you first saw the light in your heart. What a long and broad experience you have had in your life! What an opportunity this has presented for you to reflect with greater urgency on the length and breadth of Christ’s love for you. How your faith could have been deepened through all those years. How your knowledge of the eternal and true God could have been clarified. How a greater nobility of spirit could have flowed from above and into your soul. For so many years now you have sat down beside the Fountain of Salvation. How often you drank the refreshing drafts from that soul-refreshing source. How often it became a spring of water leading to eternal life for you.

For so many years now, you have become accustomed to serving him. And yet, what has happened to the remnants of your old nature that have been crucified by the power of Christ’s cross, put to death, and buried?

For so many years now, you have been involved in his service. But where is the blessing that you spread all around you? Where is the grace for which you have wrestled in prayer on behalf of your home, your friends, and your subordinates? Where is the grace that you wanted to call down from Immanuel on behalf of this spiritually darkened world?

For so many years now, you have followed the Man of Sorrows. But how much progress have you made in denying yourself? In humbling yourself? In willingly bearing the cross assigned to you? Has the shoot on your vine set a bud yet? Has the bud blossomed? After the budding was there blossoming, and after the blossoming was fruit produced? Has there been a lot of fruit as a guarantee that you are worth keeping as a branch on the vine? Has this been the fruit of a cooling ardor for the sensuous and what appeals to the eye? Has it been the fruit of becoming disentangled from wealth and material possessions so that you now treasure giving to the poor more than you do a hefty bank account or stock portfolio? Is it fruit in the more excellent sense of the fruit of the Spirit, namely, gentleness, patience, and tenderheartedness toward God and others? Above all, is it the greatest fruit of all, namely, the complete and pure love that flows from God into you? And does this love enable you to love and serve him not from a sense of obligation but from the adoration of your heart?

What more needs to be said? Your conscience already accuses you!

You drop your eyes in quiet shame and lament in your lonely bitterness: How can I make up for those many long years of living in his temple and bearing fruit hardly worth mentioning? Of making so little progress? How can I make up for the fact that while there may not have been regression since I experienced my first love, there has not been much progression in cooling toward the things of this world either? And in that inner self-awareness, you cry out, hands covering your face: O God, be merciful to me, a poor sinner, an ineffective witness, and a miserable example of a Christian!

Where would you be now, if during all those many years there had been consistent growth and fruit bearing in the eternal and invisible things of God? How fully you could have participated in the light, in confident trust, in strength of soul and a lively faith life, in an understanding of the mysteries of God, in a precious prayer life, and especially in tender fellowship and intimate communion with God. What heartfelt love you could have shared. For all those years!

This is the terrible power of sin, the world, and Satan that has impeded you in the course of your life. They have crippled in you what is noble. They have deadened for you what is precious.

If only you had realized this! Then the pride would never have stealthily entered that let you think: I have served him for all these many years; it will certainly go well for me! Then you would never have imagined ascending an angels’ ladder, but you would have appreciated walking further down the sinner’s staircase in order to receive greater grace. Then you would have been more fully aware, contended for your God, and received all you needed from above. To him, not to you, may all praise be given! But now, may you find the strength in your soul to give thanks for the grace of learning that truth. Forget about what you have gambled away for all these years. Extol what he has accomplished in you over many years. Be washed in the blood of the Lamb and reach out for quiet fellowship with him.

All those many years!

How many years still lie ahead for you? Will they be as many as you’ve already had, or will they be fewer? Do you have only a few left—or maybe only months? Will they be marked by the same old routine, the same deadness of heart, and the same putting of self above the living God?

That would definitely block his compassionate love! Then in judgment on your soul even the smoldering wick would be snuffed out.

5

THE EXTENSION OF YOUR TRANQUILITY

And it may be that your tranquility will be extended. Daniel 4:27

There can be moments in a person’s life when they feel like something bad is about to happen. They shudder apprehensively about some unseen and impending ruin being forced on them. They feel like a whirlwind is churning up a cloud of debris all around them. As a godly minister once put it, all of heaven and earth seemed to have overwhelmed him. Shaken to the core of his being, he felt that he was being forced to experience how terrible it is to fall into the hands of the living God.¹

Pray that a terrible day like that never comes, even if it seems that God is approaching you only from a distance. For more than a mere rebuke is involved in this kind of disturbance of your tranquility. God’s rage and anger are involved here. We’re talking about God opposing you with conflict and oppression. Even if you are tied to him with cords of everlasting divine love and even if you reach out to cling to God’s mercy, you find that his love no longer comforts you. You first have to endure the opposite of that love. Your shattered heart has to buckle with each blow he sends daily, knowing that more are coming tomorrow.

This applies to the person who wants to walk with the Lord. He can’t escape it. If this is what it’s like in personal life, what will these days be like for the church? Jesus described them when he said: If those days are not been shortened, even the elect will be weakened. These are days of judging and sentencing when Almighty God works out his sovereign counsel and pursues it in contrast with your best-laid plans. It is a time when his Word prevails over your own mutterings. It is a time for his will to be done rather than yours. For your efforts are expressions of flesh and blood, of what’s in your heart, and finally of what the inner recesses of your soul contrive and pursue. But he is always the Conqueror, and the one conquered is the one saved, but saved like grasping a piece of burning firewood and forcibly pulling it out of the fire.

If you were to be thrown into a fiery furnace, only God would be able to discern your inner reaction. No person other than you could do so, not even your closest brother. That’s because what is terrible about that kind of day is not the external distress it brings, but what cuts to the chase of your heart. Two people could be walking around in the same furnace, and one of them might perish, while not a hair on the other might be so much as singed. A person might be burned like a bramble bush in the eyes of the world, but nevertheless not be consumed. Like Daniel in the lions’ den, their tranquility is undisturbed. The situation about which we are warning you here is this. It’s like flames searing your skin terribly. It’s like a lion pouncing on you. It’s the hand of the spotlessly holy and long-suffering God falling heavily on you.

With the prophet, we appeal to you to examine yourselves closely, O people who have not yet been seized by a desire to give yourselves to him, lest his decision is revealed and the heat of his wrath overwhelms you.

The Lord is in no hurry to show his fierce anger. On the contrary, your God readily shows you his mercy and is slow to anger. Even when you no longer pray and when you attempt to cover your faithlessness toward him with hypocrisy, he preserves your tranquility. Long-suffering and gracious, he allows it to continue.

Our merciful Father has again averted calamity during the year that lies just behind you.² You can judge in your own hearts how the balance tilts between his benevolence and your own coolness toward him. Even though there was no tender fellowship between the two of you, your tranquility remained undisturbed.

But what about now? Have things reached a turning point? Does the last drop need to fall that will make the cup of his wrath overflow? Hasn’t the measure by which he measures now been filled?

O my friend, pray, pray hard that tranquility might be extended for you and your house. Wake up, finally, before destruction falls on you like a raging storm and God comes like a mighty wind that annihilates everything before it. Take heart. Get a grip on yourself in the light of God’s everlasting pity. Turn and avert the rupture of your tranquility by confessing and repenting.

God wants to extend your tranquility indefinitely, so that it might become an enduring and eternal tranquility that assures you of your election. He has no delight in seeing your heart cower. But he does delight in seeing it pray triumphantly in the blood of the Lamb and in watching it breathe the air of sacred tranquility. Don’t force him, then, to visit you with the flaming sword of his righteous anger.

It depends on you. What do you want? Do you prefer to meet your God in the howling wind of a storm, or would you rather meet him in the cool touch of a gentle breeze?

If you prefer in the gentle breeze, if you really want to remain in his love, and if you want your tranquility to be extended, pray that your prayers to God are genuine. Let them be marked by an earnestness that distinguishes your entire life. Offer them in contriteness and brokenheartedness. Offer them daring to plead on the basis of what Jesus wants. Offer them in dismay about yourself and without any personal claims. Offer them pleading only on the mercy of God.

6

YET, BECAUSE HE IS PERSISTENT

Yet, because he is persistent he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Luke 11:8

Luke repeatedly has Jesus using words—three times as a matter of fact—in the context of ordinary human activities that are exemplary for the spiritual life of God’s children. In chapter 16, they occur in connection with the shrewd manager. In Luke 18, they appear in the story of the widow who persisted in making life difficult for her landlord. And in the chapter here, they apply to the persistent friend.

At first appearance, the Lord’s words in each case seem shocking. One often wishes that he had never said such unexpected things. And you become uncomfortable with them when you consider how they sound to someone who mocks the gospel—or even to you when you do! What is still worse, when they are misunderstood or mishandled, these loaded words often profane the practice of prayer.

It is considered a mark of greater holiness in some circles when people speak with the living God crudely and with an indecent familiarity that mimics how the persistent friend addressed his neighbor. This produces the kind of praying that is weaned from all reverence for the holy God. It is praying more reminiscent of the insistence of a willful child than of the approach made by a mere creature to their Lord and Creator.

See to it that no one ever misleads you by dragging you down that ungodly path! Rather, lead such a person back from the error of their ways. What is appropriate for the believer to experience in their heart is the kind of presumption that Abraham showed when he approached God’s holy throne with a pleading spirit.

What Jesus says about the persistent friend is also relevant in this connection. Here our Savior is teaching us to pray only on the basis of honoring God’s name, not by putting pressure on God by appealing to our friendship with the Father.

A stranger had dropped in on the persistent questioner. So he knocked on the door to ask for bread for this nighttime traveler. When his sleepy-eyed neighbor hesitated in giving him that bread, he appealed to the sacred principle of hospitality. He sided with the stranger and through him with every stranger from a far country when they are treated gruffly and heartlessly, since that kind of thing shouldn’t happen. His good name wouldn’t allow it. That’s the reality that confronted him. And so, when his friend dared to wake him up by banging on his door, the neighbor didn’t dare simply to brush off his request. He gave him the bread requested for the sake of his own good name.

There is no indication at all that this persistent friend asked in a crude or uncivil tone of voice when he made his urgent plea. Rather, one gets the impression that he imposed on his neighbor in an apologetic and friendly way. His persistence rested not in what he was asking, but his asking depended on this expectation: If I knock on his door, he certainly can’t refuse, if only for the sake of honoring his good name.

Doesn’t all of Scripture show that that’s how God’s children should always pray? It is according to the Lord’s own explanation, when he says: I do this not because of you, O Israel, but because of my holy name that you have defiled. And when today’s Israel believes this and has the courage to act on it, tell me this: Doesn’t it seem that she is being persistent, then, in daring to plead on the basis of that name that she had once defiled? It dares to plead like Moses did when he pointed out that he was doing so, so that your enemies, O Lord, may not slander your name. It dares to be persistent like Daniel, when he prayed because your name is merciful, O Lord. Then it dares to pray like all God’s saints in the Old and New Testaments have done when, with inner stammering, they exclaim: Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner! But even then they approach the throne of grace with the appeal: O God, be merciful to me, a sinner, for the sake of your holy name.

The mistake lies in the fact that you don’t comprehend that actually all your praying, as long as you are focused on yourself, is actually one continuous expression of persistence.

People caress their soul with the notion that as long as they are praying, they are engaged in a God-pleasing activity. They think they are spiritual because they pray a lot. They think that their praying props up their chances of being heard. They amble around in Rome’s bramble patch, where folks think that their praying has merit.

And this Jesus rejects totally out of hand.

Meritorious? God pleasing? Spiritual? O my brother and sister, it’s shameful when we treat our troubles in such a shallow way! Our lack of holiness so superficially! Our standing with the Almighty with such insensitivity! It’s shameful that we think we are the kind of people who can simply run to the Lord like this with our needs. Do we really dare to pray on any other basis than on our Immanuel? Then the One who hears our prayers simply whispers to us: For the honor of his name!

7

UNMARKED GRAVES

You are like unmarked graves that people walk over without knowing it. Luke 11:44

The image that Jesus uses here of our human hearts is both deeply somber and disturbingly beautiful: an unmarked grave beside which people walk without suspecting what it contains.

Use that picture to test the hidden depths of your own heart!

I understand clearly that Jesus is applying this to the Pharisees. But does that exempt you? Are you free from being pharisaical? Can you escape the penetrating brightness of the eternal Light that fully reveals even the darkest recesses of your own heart? Do you have such a strong grip on the truth, and does the truth have the same on you so that you can’t really distinguish any longer between what’s on the inside and what’s on the outside? Have all the walls of separation toppled? Have all the curtains separating them been ripped in half, so that what you say with the tongue and what lies hidden in your soul are completely one and the same for you? Is that the case in your own conscience as well as for the One who judges you?

Don’t steal! is what you profess. But does this mean nothing more than that you don’t make off with something in a way that would make you a thief? In God’s sight it has a more precise meaning. It means that you don’t have anything in your house or vault that God himself hasn’t put there.

And applying that approach to all God’s commandments is how you keep the person honest who feels no guilt because they haven’t blatantly transgressed the law.

So why, I ask, would you stop with a condemnation of crass Pharisees? Why would you have in mind only those secret hypocrites and outwardly pious frauds? Meanwhile, isn’t your own crafty heart also caught in the snares set for holier-than-thou Pharisees by the even craftier Satan?

Or don’t you believe that Pharisaic behavior is really a plague that in its most basic form can have its deadly effect in your soul too? Do you think that Jesus would have warned you about this in such a soul-searching way if playing along with it produces no collateral damage? Or if doing so is not unbelievably harmful? Don’t you understand that the smallest involvement with anything Pharisaic makes the most beautiful flower wilt?

An unmarked grave! People notice you. They walk beside you. They stare at you. Then they even study the beautifully carved headstone and its pious inscription. But they know nothing of what is roiling and churning in the depths of your heart.

Oh, you had better believe there’s a seductiveness involved with being pious. But when piety is all about being pious and not about God in his holiness, then it’s only cold ashes. It throws off the stench of decay. It banishes all true piety from your life.

Being Pharisaic is when people pray aloud in the presence of or along with others while fostering the impression of never thinking about other people but only about God!

It’s being holy more in appearance than in actuality. It’s doing or refraining from something because another pious individual is close by, an individual who, like you do, is in turn paying more attention to you than to God. The reward for such behavior is empty.

It’s when what’s on the outside is different from what’s on the inside. It’s when the heart concentrates on its own importance, while the lips never give a hint of this. It’s mumbling with the tongue a prayer that doesn’t come from the soul.

It’s giving the appearance that you have it all together with God and other people. It’s appearing to have visibly broken with the world, when in fact you’ve left the back door of your soul open to it and resumed a steady conversation with it.

Even worse, it’s giving the appearance that you have it all together between God and yourself. It’s misleading yourself just as badly by often seeming to take up a cross that still lies undisturbed on the ground. By thinking that you’ve brought a sacrifice that is still actually walking around and grazing in the pastures of your self-love! Or by already ascribing to yourself sweet mysteries of the faith that your impure, malicious, and contentious heart never gives the first appearance of encountering.

And then we have to identify yet what is the most atrocious of all that’s lodged within. It’s the most accursed and most disgraceful of all. O may God still be gracious to your soul! It is secretly caressed and cherished within. It still coddles and fondles the deadly worm that has been gnawing at you from the time of your youth. It’s the evil that extends to the depths of wickedness in your soul. It clings to you all the time. It is the most tempting of all your bosom sins, as they rightly deserve to be called. It’s a cancer on the work of God’s grace in your soul. It joins right in with all the little sheep of the only Good Shepherd. It’s involved with whatever occupies God’s elect. It assures you that you’re always becoming more holy.

So tell me now, do you still not get the point about the unmarked graves? Will the headstone finally shed light on what is churning and swirling around inside them? Will it do this in a way that produces deep revulsion?

O the danger of beginning to think that none of this applies to you!

Whoever wants to make any progress and develop a walk with the Lord (thus live