Even Dukes Must Bow
The Duke of Wellington was the military savior of western civilization when he defeated Napoleon on the field of Waterloo in Belgium in 1815. His status and popularity in its day knew no bounds and is today rivaled only by uber-celebrities.
The Duke of Wellington as a politician and statesman was another story. One historian commented that “He might be a national hero, but like other national possessions he was reduced to constitutional proportions.”
It had to have been humbling. Wellington the soldier simply had to issue orders, but Wellington the politician and statesman had to debate and discuss, and to attend to the opinions of others and reckon with parliamentary votes and public pressures.
But a little humility is good for the soul. A person who is humble can’t be broken, because he has already been broken; humility implies brokenness, and there is nothing we need more than to humble ourselves before God, yet it is the last thing we appear capable of doing or wanting to do. Modern man is so arrogant.
I can’t resist a quotation I came across in Paul Oskar Kristeller’s Renaissance Thought: “The world of western civilization, wide and rich in comparison with our present time and society which is but a part of it, is itself small and limited when compared with the entire history of mankind, with the existence of animals, of planets, and of silent nature on our planet, or with the huge, if not infinite, extent in space and time of our visible universe.”
And still our arrogance abides! It abides because we are part and parcel of an irreligious age that cares nothing for God’s holiness or law.
I say irreligious, despite the fact that, at least in America, the Church seems to be thriving, especially Protestant evangelicalism. Two editors of the British weekly The Economist have documented such success in their important book, God Is Back:
“In America, the Evangelicals have long since reemerged from their caves. The religious right is an established part of politics in almost every state, and America has had a succession of ‘born-again’ presidents. The man it has just waved goodbye to was its most soul-on-the-sleeve religious leader since the nineteenth century: George Bush began each day on his knees and each cabinet meeting with a prayer, but he was a relatively moderate figure compared with Sara Palin, the Pentecostal selected by John McCain to be his vice presidential candidate, who has undergone rites to protect her from witchcraft. The single most frequently used noun in the 2008 Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, was ‘God.’ But the left is not immune from the influence of religion either: Barack Obama borrowed the title of his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, from a sermon delivered by Jeremiah Wright, the man who ‘brought him to God’ when he was a young man (and later almost doomed his presidential campaign).”
(So as not to leave out our Roman Catholic friends, let it be known that the fastest growing church in America in 2000 was a Catholic parish in Minneapolis/St. Paul!)
We have shopping mall churches. We have evangelical superstars. We have our own entertainments that come to us in the form of television programs, musical concerts and vacation venues. Yet the culture around us seems unscathed by it all.
Modern Christianity suffers from a duality of character: It is, on the one hand, progressive (brazen even) and expansive yet, on the other, it is inhibited, ghettoized and insecure before the secularist trends of our current day.
I think we need to be broken by God. Our confidence must never be grounded in our penchant for technique, natural charisma and talent. And our insecurity must never be mistaken for genuine humility.
God can only use broken vessels. He loves and will never despise a broken and contrite heart (Isaiah 66:2). His divine restorative will only work wonders upon the dead who would be restored to the life that God would give us.
Such brokenness finds collegiality with Jesus. The Puritan Thomas Watson observed that “A broken heart and a broken Christ do well agree. The more bitterness we taste in sin, the more sweetness we shall taste in Christ.”
Jesus is, after all, the Great Exemplar of true humility. Scripture informs us that, though He was “in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
He was enabled by His humility to endure the humiliation of crucifixion. He became a stigma to the Jews and a joke to the Gentiles. His life was gutted before the world, divested even of His relationship with the Father.
Yet God, in response, “exalted Him to the highest place, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:9-11).
The key principles are twofold: Christ humbled Himself and God exalted Him. The Apostle James applied this two-fold principle to Christians when he counseled, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up” (James 4:10).
We have already acknowledged that humility is built upon brokenness; whether our brokenness is predicated upon circumstances or the interior of our hearts (or both) is an interesting discussion — Regardless, repentance should be extracted.
It was of first concern with Jesus. His first recorded sermon at the beginning of His public ministry emphasized repentance: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).
Perhaps one reason why western Christianity seems so ineffectual for all of its ostensible success is the lack of repentance insofar as sin is concerned. We prefer to analyze problems and identify potential solutions via therapy or government.
Sin can be behavioral or attitudinal. It can be engrained in the prevailing culture and it can be wittingly or unwittingly promoted. It just doesn’t matter. Sin is sin is sin. It is the great fact of human existence.
There has been a bevy of public figures in recent times who have testified to their religious conversions or restorations. It is gratifying to hear this, at least on the surface; however, it doesn’t take long to discover a fatal flaw to their professions.
One is a renowned politician who left his sick wife for his religiously-minded mistress. Another is a pornographic movie queen. Two others are famous actors, one looking to Anglicanism and the other to Catholicism.
The Kingdom of God certainly wants sinners and not self-avowed righteous persons. Jesus was quite clear on that count (Matthew 9:13). The problem is that none have articulated repentance, let alone embodied it.
The politician hasn’t returned to his wife even if he was well-received by his new church. The porn queen hasn’t yet adorned herself in the more modest apparel of chastity. And neither of the actors has referenced repentance of any kind.
Yet it was of primary significance to Jesus, a fact not lost on the apostles. “Brothers, what shall we do?” was the cry of the people in the midst of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Church. “Repent and be baptized,” replied Peter, “every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:37, 38).
Repentance is the act by which one “changes one’s mind through regret about past action or conduct” (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). The body will follow once the mind has embarked upon a new course. The change is worth it.
Thomas Watson wrote in The Doctrine of Repentance that “Repentance is a purgative; fear not the working of this pill. Smite your soul, said Chrysostom, smite it; it will escape death by that stroke. How happy it would be if we were more deeply affected with sin, and our eyes did swim in their orb. We may clearly see the Spirit of God moving in the waters of repentance, which though troubled, are yet pure. Moist tears dry up sin and quench the wrath of God. Repentance is the cherisher of piety, the procurer of mercy. The more regret and trouble of spirit we have first at our conversion, the less we shall feel afterwards.”
I can’t adequately convey with words how thrilled I am to find that the Spirit of God is moving in the hearts of many within our fellowship. It is a work of conviction, leading to confession of sin upon which repentance may be predicated.
It is, in the very least, preparatory to revival, for if God would come amongst us, He must first purge us of all fleshly filth before He can fill us with His Holy Spirit. Remember, please, that without holiness no one will see The Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
And we want also to get into our new building. But what is of more importance — His building or our building? The New Testament compares the Church to a magnificent temple that “rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit” (Ephesians 2:21, 22).
The last sermon ever preached in our dear old and now defunct building came courtesy of my wife on Mother’s Day 2010. Her text was taken from Acts 17:24, which reads, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.”
No joke! Two days later our building was engulfed in flames and consumed by the same. But His building continued to rise, if not from the ashes, then courtesy of the blood and Spirit of Jesus.
We have oft returned to a mantra given to us in the immediate aftermath of the fire that destroyed our beautiful old church building: We will have our building when God has His building. We are His building.
But we have had to be broken if our Lord is to do a new work amidst us, just like the no longer extant neo-Gothic edifice had to be destroyed if our new building, more cost- and ministry-efficient, could be designed and built.
I have come to understand the value of brokenness in my own life. There have been various times in my life and ministry when God had to break me. I have repeatedly found that when God reveals my sin to me, whether amidst circumstance or via direct communication courtesy of His Word and Spirit, He does so in order to cleanse me afresh, fill me afresh and, consequently, use me afresh.
It is humbling, often humiliating, but always edifying and refreshing. I have every reason to believe that my fellowship, if asked to identify the most fruitful times in my ministry, would unquestionably itemize those periods of ministry that played out in the aftermath of such times of brokenness and restoration.
And, more broadly, where evangelical Christianity has been broken by God one will find real worship and fruitful ministry ensuing, whether it is the worship at the Brooklyn Tabernacle or the relief work of Samaritan’s Purse.
It may even play out in what has become a continent filled with pagans. European economic woes, the despair and purposelessness amongst its secularized populace and the rise of militant Islam should be humbling enough! Back to God Is Back:
“Religion is even (re-)emerging as a force in the very heartland of secularization. Europe is still a long way behind America: for instance, only one in ten French people say that religion plays an important role in their lives. But nevertheless there are signs that the same forces that are reviving religion in America — the quest for community in an increasingly atomized world, the desire to counterbalance choice with a sense of moral certainty — are making headway in Europe. Across the Continent the loosening of the ties between church and state is opening the religious market. In France the fastest growing creed is the most American of all, Pentecostalism. Some two million Britons have taken the so-called Alpha Course, run by an Anglican church, Holy Trinity Brompton. After embracing modernism in the 1960s with Vatican II, the Catholic Church has now returned to a more traditional version of the faith, first under John Paul II and now under his successor, Benedict XVI. The aim is to Catholicize modernity rather than to modernize Catholicism €¦.”
It takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor is the Kingdom of God. Religion, for it to have any viable worth, must be grounded in repentance. And we know that repentance isn’t easy, for often we must forsake that which we enjoy or that which is familiar. Confession isn’t easy; it is downright humiliating — humbling even!
We must be alert to our own sin, not simply the sins of others. We must be honest with ourselves and patient, even with God. We must not force anything. Things take time, even a lifetime. God has ordained it that way.
The nineteenth century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins sought out God to find peace and found that God “does leave Patience exquisite/ That plumes to Peace thereafter.” Patience requires humility and humility, to do its work, will exact repentance amidst very humbling, even humiliating circumstances.
We may be reduced, like the Duke of Wellington, to constitutional proportions! And, like Europe which once was broken by Napoleon and now faces the onslaught of an entrenched and militant Islam, Christians must be prepared to be broken by whatever means and circumstances that God is willing to use.
The difference is that God breaks us in order to restore us. He disciplines us because He loves us (Hebrews 12:6). And “He who began a good work in you will carry that work to completion on the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
Even dukes and heroes must bow, but Christians will rise anew. All praise to Him!
Bradley E. Lacey
July 16, 2010