This morning, I woke up with a heavy heart as I considered the results of last nightโs election. Iโve spent much of the morning praying, thinking about the condition of our nation, and returning to the Scriptures.
My disappointment isnโt simply about political parties or who won and who lost. My concern is much deeper than that. As Christians, we are called to examine what we value, what we approve of, and what we place our hope in. We ought to be asking whether our convictions are being shaped by the Word of God or by the desires of our flesh, our pursuit of comfort, our love of money, and the things this world promises us.
And that examination must begin with ourselves.
Paul writes in Romans 1:16โ17:
โFor I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, โThe righteous shall live by faith.โโ
Paul continues in Romans 1:18โ32 by describing humanityโs rejection of God. Although God has made Himself known through creation, sinful humanity has exchanged the truth about God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.
What a sobering description of the human heart.
We are so prone to elevate created things into places of ultimate importance. Power, prosperity, security, comfort, approval, and even our political convictions can become idols when we allow them to occupy the place that belongs to God alone.
But Romans doesnโt leave us merely examining the sins of the world around us. Paul goes on to establish that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). None of us stands righteous before God on our own merit. Yet Romans 3:24 reminds us that sinners can be justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
That is the gospel. And that is where our hope must remain.
Something else has been on my heart this morning as I think about the women Iโve been teaching and the passages of Scripture weโve been studying together.
When Paul writes, โThe righteous shall live by faith,โ he is quoting Habakkuk 2:4.
Habakkuk was a prophet who looked around at the wickedness, injustice, and violence of his own day and cried out to the Lord. He struggled to understand what God was doing and why He seemed to allow evil to continue.
Doesnโt that sound familiar?
But what I find so beautiful about Habakkuk is that he doesnโt abandon the Lord in his confusion. Instead, he positions himself to watch and wait.
โI will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me.โ โ Habakkuk 2:1
In the ancient world, watchmen stood upon city walls, looking for approaching danger or messengers. Habakkuk uses this imagery to describe his posture before God. He doesnโt have all the answers, but he is determined to wait upon the Lord.
And Godโs answer includes this remarkable declaration:
โBut the righteous shall live by his faith.โ โ Habakkuk 2:4
Faith does not mean having every answer. It does not require circumstances to change before we trust God. It means trusting His character, His promises, and His purposes even when the outcome is not yet visible.
By the end of Habakkukโs book, his circumstances have not suddenly become easy. Yet he declares that even if the fig tree should not blossom, the fields yield no food, and the flocks disappear, he will rejoice in the Lord and take joy in the God of his salvation (Habakkuk 3:17โ19).
What a beautiful picture of faith in the in-between.
This is what I want to remember this morning.
My joy cannot depend upon election results, political leadership, financial security, or the direction of our culture. If it does, my peace will always be as unstable as my circumstances.
But Christ is not unstable. His throne is not threatened. His promises have not changed, and His return is certain.
So yes, I am grieved. I am praying for repentance, for revival, and for hearts to turn back to the living God. I am praying that the Church would be faithful to His Word, unwilling to exchange truth for comfort or compromise for acceptance.
But I am also reminded that our calling has not changed.
We are still called to proclaim the gospel, love our neighbors, pursue righteousness, speak truth, repent of our own sins, and live by faith.
Our hope was never supposed to rest in the outcome of an election. It rests in the risen and returning Christ.
So my prayer today echoes the words of King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20:12:
โWe do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.โ
Lord, may our eyes remain fixed upon You. Bring us to repentance. Revive Your Church. Teach us to be faithful in the waiting, steadfast in truth, and joyful in Your salvation.
This is sort of a follow up to my previous post regarding my journey out of practicing syncretism and with it being October this word study felt timely.
There is an interesting Greek word in the New Testament that is worth slowing down over as we study Scriptureโs warnings about sorcery and occult practices. The word pharmakeia (ฯฮฑฯฮผฮฑฮบฮตฮฏฮฑ) appears in Galatians 5:20 and is commonly translated as โsorceryโ or โwitchcraft.โ It also appears in Revelation 9:21 and 18:23.
The word is related to pharmakon, which could refer to a drug, medicine, poison, or potion. In ancient contexts, substances and potions could be associated with magical or occult practices, which helps explain the connection between this family of words and sorcery. The Greek word is also related historically to our English word pharmacy. However, this does not mean that pharmakeia simply means taking drugs, that all medicines were associated with sorcery, or that the modern practice of pharmacy is inherently occult. We need to let the context of Scripture determine how the word is being used.
What makes Galatians 5 particularly important is that Paul doesnโt mention pharmakeia in isolation. He includes it in a larger list of what he calls the โworks of the fleshโ (Galatians 5:19โ21). This list includes sexual immorality, idolatry, sorcery, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and other sinful practices. Paul is describing a way of life that is opposed to the life God calls His people to live.
But notice where Paul takes the discussion next.
In Galatians 5:16, he writes:
โBut I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.โ
After describing the works of the flesh, Paul contrasts them with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22โ23).
This connection is important because the Christian response to occult practices is not merely to identify what we must avoid. It is to turn toward God and learn to walk by His Spirit. Repentance involves turning away from what is contrary to Him, but the Christian life is not sustained by avoidance alone. We are called to grow in Christlikeness as the Spirit works in us.
When I look back on my own story, I can see why this distinction matters. I once looked to crystals and stones for energy and manifestation, used tarot cards to seek answers, and pursued spiritual guidance outside of what God has revealed in His Word. At the time, I believed I could combine those practices with my belief in Jesus. I didnโt understand that following Christ required me to reconsider not only what I believed but also where I was looking for wisdom, guidance, and spiritual power.
As I began sitting under the preaching and teaching of Scripture, I started to see these things differently. My response wasnโt supposed to be an ongoing fascination with the practices I was leaving behind. It was to turn toward Christ, trust His Word, and allow His truth to reshape how I lived.
That is the distinction I want us to understand. We do not become spiritually mature simply by learning to recognize everything we should avoid. We grow as we know God through His Word, depend on His Spirit, and increasingly bring our thoughts, desires, decisions, and actions under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Paul brings this section of Galatians to a fitting conclusion:
โIf we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.โ โ Galatians 5:25
The goal isnโt to become fascinated with darkness or to spend our lives looking for it around every corner. The goal is to know Christ and walk faithfully with Him. As we grow in our understanding of Godโs Word, we learn to discern what is contrary to Him and to cultivate what honors Him.
For me, repentance began to take a tangible form when I gathered up the objects I had once considered spiritually meaningful and threw them away. But removing those objects was not the whole of the Christian life. It was one expression of a deeper change: I was learning that Jesus was not meant to be one spiritual authority among many in my life. He is Lord, and I am called to follow Him.
The question is not only, โWhat must I turn away from?โ It is also, โHow can I walk more faithfully with Christ?โ
There are passages of Scripture that we read and appreciate, and then there are passages that seem to reach across the pages of the Bible and meet us right where we are.
Acts 19:18โ20 is one of those passages for me.
I have read the account of the people in Ephesus who practiced magic and then brought their scrolls together and burned them, but the older I get in my faith, the more I understand why Luke included this detail. These people didnโt simply hear Paul preach, agree with what he said, and then continue living exactly as they had before. The Word of God confronted something in their lives, and their response was to repent and remove the things that belonged to their old way of life.
Luke writes:
โAlso many of those who were now believers came confessing and disclosing their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.โ โ Acts 19:18โ20
For a long time, I thought I understood what it meant to believe in Jesus.
I believed in God. I believed Jesus was real. I would have told you that I was a Christian. But looking back, I can see that my understanding of Christianity was mixed with many other things. I was practicing what I now understand as syncretism: taking pieces of Christianity and combining them with other spiritual practices that I believed could give me knowledge, protection, power, guidance, or access to something beyond what I could see.
I didnโt understand at the time that these things were incompatible with following Christ.
I grew up knowing that the spiritual realm was real. There were things I experienced and witnessed in my childhood that I could not explain, and because of those experiences, I never really struggled with the idea that there was more to this world than what we can see. The problem was that I didnโt have a biblical framework for understanding any of it.
I knew there was a spiritual world, but I didnโt understand that Scripture teaches us to distinguish between what comes from God and what does not.
So I began looking in places I should never have looked.
There were crystals, stones, and gems that I believed carried energy or could help with manifestation. I had tarot cards that I used to look for answers about the future or ask questions and seek guidance from spirits. At one point I had an altar where I kept things that I associated with spiritual power, including parts of dead animals. During a particularly dark period of my life when I was struggling with self-harm, I even used my own blood on that altar while asking for particular things to happen to people who had hurt me.
I donโt share those details because I want to make the darkness sound interesting. I actually want to do the opposite.
I want to be careful about how we talk about these things because our culture has become very comfortable with spiritual practices that Scripture tells us to take seriously. What is sometimes presented as harmless, aesthetic, empowering, or even entertaining can become spiritually significant without us recognizing what we are participating in.
My story isnโt meant to make anyone curious about those things.
It is meant to show what happened when I finally began looking at them through the lens of Scripture.
When I Came Back to Church
When I came back to church as an adult, something began to change in me that I didnโt fully understand at first.
I started sitting under the preaching and teaching of Godโs Word in a way I never really had before. I wasnโt simply hearing encouraging messages. I was beginning to encounter Scripture as Godโs Word, with the authority to tell me what was true, what was false, what was holy, what was sinful, and what needed to change in my life.
The more I listened, the more I began to see things differently.
I had spent years believing that I could have Jesus and still hold onto these other spiritual practices. I thought I could believe in God while also looking to crystals for energy, tarot for answers, manifestation for outcomes, and spiritual experiences for guidance.
But Scripture doesnโt present Jesus as one spiritual option among many.
Jesus is Lord.
One of the passages that helped me understand this was Deuteronomy 18, where God specifically warned His people against practices such as divination, sorcery, interpreting omens, witchcraft, mediums, and consulting the dead. God wasnโt giving Israel a list of strange things they should be afraid of. He was teaching them where they were to look for guidance and where they were not.
The issue wasnโt whether there was a spiritual realm.
The issue was who God had told His people to trust.
Isaiah says something similar:
โAnd when they say to you, โInquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,โ should not a people inquire of their God?โ โ Isaiah 8:19
That question is incredibly important.
Should not a people inquire of their God?
I began realizing that I had been looking for answers in places where God had never told me to look.
The Night I Cleaned Out My Closets
Eventually, the conviction became impossible for me to ignore.
I remember one night going through my closets and gathering these things up. It was the middle of the night, and I began pulling out the things I had accumulated over the years.
I threw them away.
Some of these things had cost me real money. They werenโt insignificant possessions that I had no attachment to. They were things I had intentionally purchased and kept because I believed they had some kind of spiritual significance.
But by that point, the question in my mind was no longer, โDo these things really work?โ
The question was, โDo these things belong in a life surrendered to Jesus?โ
And I knew the answer.
My husband was in complete shock.
We had argued about some of these things over the years. Eventually, he had essentially taken the position of agreeing to disagree with me. He knew how strongly I felt about them, and I knew how strongly he felt differently.
So when he saw me gathering everything up and getting rid of it, he couldnโt believe what he was seeing.
I remember telling him that I felt convicted by the Lord and that I needed to listen to the Spirit.
I didnโt have a perfectly developed theology of everything that was happening in that moment. I didnโt have all the answers. But I had begun to understand something that I hadnโt understood before:
If I belonged to Christ, I could not continue treating every spiritual practice as though it was compatible with Him.
So I got rid of it.
And I have never looked back.
The People in Ephesus
This is why Acts 19 means so much to me.
When Paul came to Ephesus, he reasoned with people from the Scriptures and taught them about the kingdom of God. The chapter tells us that his ministry continued for an extended period of time, and that God was doing extraordinary things through him.
There was also a dramatic confrontation involving some men who attempted to use the name of Jesus without actually belonging to Him. Their encounter exposed something important: the name of Jesus isnโt a spiritual formula that we manipulate to get power. Jesus is Lord, and His authority cannot be separated from relationship with Him.
And then we come to verses 18โ20.
Many who had believed came confessing what they had been doing. Those who had practiced magic brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.
I love that Luke tells us what those scrolls were worth.
Fifty thousand pieces of silver.
Whatever the exact modern equivalent, Luke wants us to understand that this was not a meaningless sacrifice. These were valuable possessions.
They didnโt say, โWell, these cost a lot, so Iโll keep them even though I donโt use them.โ
They didnโt put them in a box in the attic.
They didnโt keep them around as a reminder of their past.
They burned them.
And I think there is something we need to understand about biblical repentance here.
Repentance is more than feeling bad about something.
It is more than admitting that something was wrong.
Repentance means turning.
Sometimes that turning requires us to make very practical changes in our lives.
For those believers in Ephesus, repentance meant getting rid of the things associated with their former practices. For me, it meant going through my closets in the middle of the night and throwing away the things I had once considered spiritually meaningful.
The objects werenโt the source of my salvation or the proof that I had truly repented. Christ was my salvation.
But getting rid of those things was one tangible expression of what God was doing in my heart.
I Didnโt Become Afraid of the Spiritual Realm
One of the things I want to make clear about my story is that I didnโt come away from this thinking that the spiritual realm wasnโt real.
Quite the opposite.
I already knew it was real.
What changed was the lens through which I understood it.
Before Christ became central in my life, I had treated the spiritual realm almost like a marketplace. There were good things and bad things, different kinds of spiritual power, different ways to gain knowledge, different sources of guidance, and different practices I could use depending on what I wanted.
But Scripture gave me a completely different framework.
There is one God.
He is Creator.
I am His creature.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
And I donโt need to search the spiritual world for power, knowledge, protection, identity, or guidance because God has already told me where to go.
His Word.
His presence.
His wisdom.
His people.
And ultimately, Christ Himself.
I donโt want my testimony to make people fascinated with the things I used to practice. I donโt want to describe my past in a way that makes darkness sound mysterious or powerful or exciting.
I want women to learn to look at the world through the lens of Scripture.
Because the spiritual danger isnโt only found in obvious things.
Sometimes it is hidden beneath something beautiful.
Sometimes it is packaged as self-care.
Sometimes it is called manifestation.
Sometimes it is entertainment.
Sometimes it is presented as harmless curiosity.
And sometimes we donโt recognize what we are participating in because we have never opened our Bibles and learned what God actually says about it.
What About the Things We Let Enter Our Homes?
This is where I think Acts 19 begins to challenge all of us.
We can read about the people of Ephesus and think, โWell, I donโt practice magic, so this doesnโt really apply to me.โ
But Scripture asks us to examine our hearts much more deeply than that.
What sources do I look to for guidance?
What do I believe will give me power or control?
Where do I go when I am afraid?
What am I trusting to protect me?
What do I believe will tell me what is going to happen?
What practices have I allowed into my life because they seemed harmless?
What entertainment has slowly taught me to become comfortable with things God calls us to reject?
What have I kept because it has sentimental value even though I know it doesnโt belong in my life with Christ?
These are questions meant to make us discerning.
Paul tells the believers in Corinth that they cannot have fellowship with the Lord while participating in what belongs to idolatry. Scripture consistently calls Godโs people to distinguish between what belongs to Him and what does not.
That doesnโt mean Christians should live terrified of everything around them.
It means we should live with our eyes open.
We donโt need to become fascinated with darkness in order to recognize it.
We need to know the light.
When the Word Confronts Us
One of the things I love about Acts 19 is that the people werenโt simply given a list of rules.
They encountered the Word of God.
And when the Word confronted them, they responded.
That is what happened to me.
I didnโt wake up one morning and decide that I needed to completely change my spiritual worldview because I had become particularly disciplined or wise.
God used His Word.
He allowed me to sit under preaching and teaching, and slowly I began to see what I hadnโt seen before.
That is why I have become so passionate about studying Scripture.
The Bible doesnโt simply give us information about God.
It teaches us how to see everything else.
It gives us a framework for understanding ourselves, the world around us, suffering, temptation, sin, relationships, culture, our bodies, our families, and even the unseen spiritual realities that Scripture tells us exist.
The more we know Godโs Word, the less dependent we become on our own feelings and experiences to determine what is true.
And that matters because my experiences were real to me, but my experiences could not be my authority.
Scripture had to be.
Behold Christ
This is where I want us to end, because the point of Acts 19 isnโt really the books.
It is Jesus.
The people of Ephesus werenโt saved because they burned their scrolls. They burned their scrolls because they had come to believe in Christ and their allegiance to Him changed what they were willing to keep.
Christianity isnโt primarily about cleaning up our lives so that we can become acceptable to God.
It is about being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ and then allowing His lordship to change everything.
There were many things I needed to leave behind when I came to Christ.
But what I gained was infinitely greater.
I didnโt lose access to spiritual power.
I found the One who has all authority.
I didnโt lose the ability to seek answers.
I found the One who is Truth.
I didnโt lose protection.
I found the One who is my refuge.
I didnโt lose my connection to the spiritual world.
I found the God who created both the seen and the unseen and who has authority over them all.
And that is why Acts 19:20 is such a beautiful ending to this story:
โSo the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.โ
The books were burned.
But the Word remained.
And the Word prevailed.
Maybe your story looks nothing like mine.
Maybe you have never owned tarot cards or crystals. Maybe you have never participated in anything you would have called occult or spiritual.
But I would still encourage you to sit with Acts 19 for a while.
Ask the Lord to search your heart.
Are there things you have been trying to hold alongside Christ?
Are there places you are looking for guidance that God has not given you permission to look?
Are there practices you have accepted because our culture has made them seem harmless?
Are there things in your home, your entertainment, your habits, or your thinking that the Holy Spirit has been bringing to your attention?
And if He does bring something to mind, donโt respond with shame.
Respond with repentance.
You donโt have to be fascinated with what you are leaving behind.
You donโt have to understand every detail of it.
You donโt have to become an expert on darkness.
You simply need to know Christ and trust His Word.
There was a night when I went through my closets and threw away things that I once believed were spiritually meaningful.
I didnโt know then that years later I would look back on that night and see Acts 19 in it.
But now I do.
And I am grateful that the Lord loved me enough to let His Word confront me.
Because the greatest thing that happened wasnโt that I threw away some books, cards, stones, or objects.
The greatest thing that happened was that I began to understand that Jesus was not meant to be one part of my spirituality.
He was calling me to Himself.
Come Study With Me
Read: Acts 19:8โ20 Study: Deuteronomy 18:9โ14; Isaiah 8:19โ20; 1 Corinthians 10:20โ21 Ask: What does this passage teach me about repentance? What does it reveal about where I seek guidance and authority? Examine: Is there anything I am attempting to hold alongside Christ? Behold: Jesus is Lord over both the seen and unseen. Respond: Repent where God convicts, remove what needs to be removed, and trust Christ completely.
In 1929, the Soviet Union introduced what became known as the โcontinuous working weekโ (nepreryvka). The goal was to keep factories operating continuously and maximize industrial productivity. Instead of everyone sharing the same weekly day of rest, workers were divided into groups and assigned different days off. Four days of work were followed by one day of rest, but because everyoneโs schedule was staggered, the factory could keep operating every day.
The system created an unexpectedโand deeply humanโproblem.
Families and friends often no longer had the same day off.
A husband might have Tuesday off while his wife had Friday. Parents and children could have different schedules. Communities lost a common rhythm of rest and gathering. The arrangement also made participation in religious worship more difficult, particularly because the traditional Sunday rest had been eliminated.
The experiment ultimately failed. In 1931, the Soviet government replaced the five-day system with a six-day work cycle, and in 1940 the traditional seven-day week was restored.
Why does this matter when reading Scripture?
Because Sabbath was never merely about stopping work.
God established a rhythm of work, rest, worship, community, and remembrance.
The Sabbath created a shared rhythm for Godโs people.
It reminded Israel:
We are not machines.โจOur worth is not measured by our productivity.โจGod is our provider.โจRest is a gift.โจWorship matters.โจCommunity matters.
The Soviet experiment tried to organize human beings around continuous production.
God built a rhythm into His covenant people that reminded them they belonged first to Him.
โRemember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.โ โ Exodus 20:8
And perhaps that gives us another reason to slow down when we read Leviticus.
God was not merely giving Israel a list of strange regulations.
He was teaching them how to live as His people in His presence.
Even their calendar was meant to remind them who they belonged to.
This little historical story paired with my Sabbath readings really gave me a lot to chew on in a way I did not expectโฆ it caused me to ask myself, How does my calendar reflect the things that are important to me? Does my calendar look like the worldโs calendar, does my family rhythm reflect that we are a people set apart? Or are we busy to just be busy?
๐ฟ โ A Note to Remember
God did not create us for endless production.โจHe created us for Himself.
This morning, I found myself especially grateful for Paulโs honesty.
In Philippians 3:12, he says:
โNot that I have already obtained this or am already perfectโฆโ
Paul admits that he hasnโt arrived.
I donโt know about you, but I find that incredibly encouraging.
Sometimes we can think that following Jesus means we should eventually have everything figured out. That if weโve been Christians long enough, we should be past the struggle, past the weakness, past the areas where God is still working on us.
But Paul, one of the greatest apostles who ever lived, says essentially, Iโm not there yet.
Neither am I.
When we come to Christ, we receive salvation by grace. But salvation isnโt the end of our journey; itโs the beginning of a lifelong process of becoming more like Christ.
We strive toward holiness, not salvation.
We arenโt working so that Christ will choose us. We pursue Him because He has already made us His own.
Paul uses the Greek word teleios (ฯฮญฮปฮตฮนฮฟฯ) for โperfectโ in verse 12. The word can mean complete, mature, or brought toward an intended goal.
Then Paul uses that same word again in verse 15:
โLet those of us who are mature think this wayโฆโ
Thereโs something wonderfully humbling about that.
One mark of Christian maturity is recognizing that we havenโt arrived.
There is still more of Christ to know, more holiness to pursue, more sin to put to death, and more grace to receive.
Paulโs confidence isnโt in how far he has come.
His confidence is in Christ, who has already taken hold of him.
Paul continues:
โBut one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies aheadโฆโ
Paul had a lot behind him.
He had religious credentials, accomplishments, zeal, suffering, and failures. Earlier in this chapter, he lays out his impressive Jewish rรฉsumรฉ and then calls it loss compared with the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
He refused to allow either his accomplishments or his failures to become the place where he lived.
Sometimes what lies behind us is shame. Sometimes itโs grief. Sometimes itโs success. Sometimes itโs the version of ourselves we wish we could get back. And sometimes itโs simply everything weโve already carried.
Paul doesnโt pretend the past didnโt happen.
He simply refuses to let it determine the direction heโs going.
His eyes are forward.
The Greek word Paul uses for โstraining forwardโ gives us the picture of a runner stretching toward the finish line.
William Barclay describes it as a racer going hard for the finishing line, with his eyes fixed on the goal.
Paul says:
โI press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.โ
The prize is not simply getting through our present circumstances.
The prize is Christ and the fullness of life with Him.
Scripture gives us glimpses of what awaits us: an imperishable inheritance, the kingdom prepared for Godโs people, and the day when death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more.
That is where weโre headed.
And knowing where weโre going changes how we walk through where we are.
This Week Has Felt Heavy
This passage felt especially personal to me this morning because this last week has been a lot.
I lost a dear friend who leaves children behind, and my heart has been breaking for them.
I spent part of the week walking through an incredibly difficult trial connected to one of the children I advocate for.
Then my mom ended up in the emergency room, and Iโve needed to stay close by, helping with medications and keeping an eye on things while also continuing to care for everything at home.
And life at home hasnโt exactly slowed down.
For my son, difficult events often show up later through increased anxiety and a greater need for control. After the hospital visit, weโve been navigating some of those things tooโdifficulty focusing, increased activity, changes in eating, and struggles around routines.
Itโs been a full week.
And honestly, Iโm tired.
Iโm someone who can usually carry a lot. But there is a difference between being strong and being exhausted.
This week has reminded me that Iโm not perfect. Iโm still being sanctified, and Iโm still learning what it means to trust Christ in difficult places.
Thatโs one reason Paulโs words meant so much to me this morning.
He doesnโt tell us that mature Christians never struggle. He shows us what it looks like to remain focused on Christ while we are still struggling.
One thing that has kept me anchored through this week is simply getting up and opening my Bible.
Not because every morning has felt profound. Sometimes it has simply been obedience. Sometimes it has been the only quiet moment I could find.
But I keep coming back because I know where my strength comes from.
โThe joy of the Lord is your strengthโ (Nehemiah 8:10).
My circumstances arenโt necessarily joyful right now.
But Christ is still faithful.
And that gives me a hope the world cannot offer.
We donโt suffer as people who have no hope.
We grieve, but not without hope.
We hurt, but not without Christ.
We become exhausted, but we are not abandoned.
Iโve found myself thinking often this week about the words at the end of Revelation:
โSurely I am coming soon.โ
And Johnโs response:
โAmen. Come, Lord Jesus!โ
There are days when I understand that prayer more deeply than others.
I long for the day when there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more death, and no more brokenness.
But until that day comes, I want to be found faithful.
Paul says in Philippians 4:11:
โI have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.โ
I love that word: learned.
Contentment wasnโt something Paul simply possessed.
He learned it.
And Iโm still learning it tooโฆ
Maybe thatโs why Philippians 3 has been so timely for me.
Paulโs identity wasnโt ultimately defined by his accomplishments, his suffering, his failures, or his circumstances.
His identity was rooted in Christ. And mine is too.
Who I am isnโt ultimately determined by what has happened to me.
It isnโt determined by what I accomplish or by the season Iโm walking through.
Who I am is based on whose I am.
I belong to Christ.
And because I belong to Christ, I can face the next thing in front of me without having to pretend that Iโm strong enough for all of it.
Paul doesnโt tell us to press on because weโre strong. He tells us to press on because Christ has already made us His own.
We arenโt running to prove ourselves worthy or to earn salvation. Weโre running toward the One who pursued us first.
So when the road feels heavy, we fix our eyes on Christ.
When the past tries to define us, we look ahead.
When suffering exhausts us, we remember the prize.
We havenโt arrived.
But Christ has made us His own, and He will bring us safely to the goal.
One day, the race will be finished.
The tears will be gone.
The suffering will be over.
And we will finally see the One toward whom we have been running all along.
Sacrifice of some kind was a nearly universal practice among ancient peoples. Israelโs sacrificial system shared certain similarities with the practices of surrounding nations, but it was also distinctly different in several important ways.
1. Israelโs Absolute Monotheism
Israel worshiped one true God, Yahweh. The sacrificial system was not created by Israel as a means of manipulating multiple competing gods. God Himself gave Israel specific instructions for worship and sacrifice as part of His covenant relationship with them.
2. Sacrifice Was Connected to Holiness, Ethics, and Obedience
Israelโs worship was rooted in the character of God Himself. Because God is absolutely holy, His people were called to holiness.
The sacrificial system was therefore connected to sin, repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and obedience to Godโs covenant commands. Sacrifice was never intended to replace faithful obedience.
โYou shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.โ โ Leviticus 19:2
The prophets repeatedly reinforce this truth: God does not delight in ritual performed apart from righteousness and obedience (1 Samuel 15:22; Isaiah 1:11โ17; Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6โ8).
3. Israel Was Forbidden to Incorporate Magic and Occult Practices
Israelโs worship was not to be blended with the religious practices of the surrounding nations. God explicitly prohibited magic, sorcery, divination, necromancy, and related practices (Leviticus 19:26, 31; 20:6; Deuteronomy 18:9โ14).
Biblical sacrifice was never magic. It was not a technique for manipulating God or forcing Him to provide a desired outcome.
4. Israelโs Sacrificial System Had a High Moral Character
The biblical sacrificial system was fundamentally different from fertility religions and other surrounding practices. Israel was prohibited from incorporating ritual prostitution, sexual immorality, occult practices, and human sacrifice into its worship (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 18:9โ14).
Israelโs worship was to reflect the holiness of the God they worshiped.
Sacrifice Before Sinai
Sacrifice did not begin with the Mosaic covenant.
Long before Leviticus, Scripture records people offering sacrifices to God:
Cain and Abel โ Genesis 4:3โ5
Noah โ Genesis 8:20โ22
Abraham โ Genesis 12:7โ8 and following
Job โ Job 1:5
The biblical record clearly demonstrates that sacrifice was practiced among Godโs people long before the detailed sacrificial laws given through Moses.
The Mosaic covenant therefore revealed and regulated Israelโs sacrificial worship within their covenant relationship with God.
Cain and Abel: The Importance of the Worshiper
Genesis 4:3โ5 gives us one of Scriptureโs earliest accounts of sacrifice.
Cain brought an offering from the fruit of the ground, while Abel brought the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions.
God regarded Abel and his offering, but did not regard Cain and his offering.
The text does not explicitly state that Cain offered his โsecond best.โ What it does emphasize is that Abel brought the firstborn and the fat portionsโthe valuable portions of his flock.
The following conversation with Cain makes clear that the issue was not merely the physical offering. God addresses Cainโs conduct and heart:
โIf you do well, will you not be accepted?โ โ Genesis 4:7
The story therefore establishes an important biblical principle:
God cares about both the offering and the heart of the worshiper.
Why Cain and Abel Matter
The story appears remarkably early in Scripture, before Sinai, the tabernacle, the priesthood, or the Levitical system.
Already, Scripture is asking:
What does it mean to approach God rightly?
Cain and Abel introduce a theme that will continue throughout Scripture:
Worship cannot be separated from the heart and conduct of the worshiper.
This becomes essential for understanding the sacrifices of Leviticus. The sacrifices were not empty rituals performed mechanically. They belonged within a relationship of covenant faithfulness, holiness, repentance, and obedience.
Noah: Sacrifice and Covenant Grace
After the flood, Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings to the LORD (Genesis 8:20โ22).
The LORD received Noahโs offering as a pleasing aroma and then declared His commitment to preserve the regular rhythms of creation:
โWhile the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.โ โ Genesis 8:22
The passage should not be understood as though Noahโs sacrifice manipulated God or changed Him from anger to mercy.
Rather, the sacrifice occurs within the larger story of judgment, grace, and covenant promise. God graciously commits Himself to sustaining His creation despite humanityโs continuing sinfulness.
As we enter Leviticus, we should first ask what each sacrifice meant within Israelโs own covenant relationship with God.
For each sacrifice, consider:
What was being offered?
Who brought the offering?
What was the worshiper required to do?
What did the priest do?
What happened to the blood and offering?
What portion belonged to God?
What portion, if any, belonged to the worshiper or priest?
What problem or need did the sacrifice address?
How did it relate to holiness, sin, forgiveness, fellowship, or thanksgiving?
How does the rest of Scripture develop this theme?
Where does the New Testament explicitly connect these themes to Jesus Christ?
This allows us to trace the sacrificial system toward Christ without forcing meanings onto the text that Scripture itself does not establish.
Key Thought
Sacrifice was never merely about putting something on an altar.
From the earliest pages of Scripture, sacrifice is connected with approaching God, responding to sin, worshiping rightly, honoring Godโs holiness, and living in covenant relationship with Him.
Israelโs sacrificial system was not unique simply because Israel sacrificed. It was unique because Yahwehโthe one true and holy Godโrevealed how His covenant people were to worship and approach Him.
As we study Leviticus, we will see the altar continually teaching Israel that:
sin is serious, God is holy, forgiveness is costly, and fellowship with God is a gracious gift.
The book of Leviticus begins precisely where Exodus leaves off.
The tabernacle has been completed, and the glory of the LORD has filled it. Godโs presence is so overwhelming that Moses is unable to enter the tent of meeting (Exodus 40:34โ35).
That detail is important.
Leviticus begins with a question:
How can a holy God dwell among an unholy people?
Leviticus breaks from much of the narrative structure of Genesis and Exodus and moves primarily into instructions concerning sacrifices, priesthood, purity, holiness, worship, and covenant life.
But these laws are not random regulations.
Mosesโ inability to enter the tabernacle establishes the theological problem that drives the book:
God is holy, and His people are not.
God desires to dwell among His people, yet His holiness cannot simply overlook sin and impurity. Leviticus therefore explains how Israel is to approach God, worship Him, deal with sin and ritual impurity, and live as a people set apart for His presence.
The sacrificial system provided God-appointed means of atonement, purification, forgiveness, and restored fellowship within the Mosaic covenant.
Three Major Areas of Leviticus
The laws of Leviticus can broadly be understood through three overlapping areas:
1. Ritual
These instructions govern Israelโs worshipโparticularly sacrifices, offerings, festivals, holy days, and other prescribed rituals.
2. Priesthood
These laws concern the ordination, qualifications, responsibilities, and conduct of the priests, who served in Israelโs worship and ministry at the sanctuary.
3. Holiness
These instructions teach Israel what it meant to live as a people set apart to God. They address worship, morality, relationships, sexuality, food, ritual purity, justice, and everyday life.
And this is important:
Ritual impurity is not necessarily the same thing as moral sin.
Something could make an Israelite ritually unclean without that person having committed a moral offense. The purity laws distinguish between categories of clean and unclean, while the holiness laws also address moral obedience and covenant faithfulness.
Together, these laws teach Israel that life in the presence of a holy God requires distinction, reverence, and holiness.
What Do These Laws Have in Common?
Though the laws of Leviticus address many different subjects, several themes continually emerge.
They call Israel to be holy.
โYou shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.โ โ Leviticus 19:2
They set Israel apart from the surrounding nations.
Israel was not simply another ancient nation with another religious system. They belonged to Yahweh and were called to reflect His character.
They continually remind Israel of their covenant relationship with God.
Their worship, daily lives, bodies, homes, food, relationships, priests, festivals, and sacrifices all existed within the reality that they belonged to God.
And they prepare us to understand the need for a greater and final atonement.
The New Testament explicitly develops the sacrificial and priestly themes of Leviticus and shows their fulfillment in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9โ10).
We should be careful, however, not to force Christ into every individual detail of Leviticus. Instead, we watch for the connections that Scripture itself develops and allows the biblical storyline to lead us to Christ.
The Day of Atonement
At the center of Leviticus stands Leviticus 16โthe Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur.
This was the great annual ceremony in which atonement was made for the sins and impurities of Israel and the sanctuary.
Two goats were selected.
One was offered as a sin offering.
The other became the scapegoat. The high priest confessed the sins of Israel over the goat, symbolically placing their iniquities upon it, and the goat was sent away into the wilderness.
These two goats vividly communicate two dimensions of atonement:
sin requires dealing with, and sin is removed from Godโs people.
The New Testament helps us see the greater fulfillment of these realities in Christ, whose sacrifice is not repeated annually but is once for all (Hebrews 9:11โ14; 10:10โ14).
Why Leviticus Matters
Leviticus may require a little more work to understand and apply than some of the more narrative books of Scripture.
But it gives us a profound picture of Godโs character and His purposes.
It teaches us that:
God is holy.
Sin and impurity matter.
God desires to dwell with His people.
Atonement is necessary for sinners to approach a holy God.
God Himself provides the way for His people to draw near.
And as the biblical story continues, these themes lead us toward the ultimate fulfillment of Godโs provision:
Jesus Christ, our perfect and once-for-all sacrifice.
A Simple Outline of Leviticus
Chapters 1โ7 โ The Sacrificial Offerings
Instructions concerning Israelโs various offerings, including the burnt, grain, peace, sin, and guilt offerings.
Chapters 8โ10 โ The Priesthood
The ordination of Aaron and his sons, their responsibilities, and the judgment that falls on Nadab and Abihu for unauthorized worship.
Chapters 11โ15 โ Clean and Unclean
Instructions concerning clean and unclean animals, bodily conditions, skin diseases, bodily discharges, and other matters of ritual purity.
Chapter 16 โ The Day of Atonement
Instructions for Israelโs annual Day of Atonement and the cleansing of the sanctuary and people.
Chapter 17 โ The Holiness of Blood and Sacrifice
Instructions concerning where sacrifices may be offered and the sacred significance of blood.
Chapters 18โ20 โ Holiness in Everyday Life
Commands concerning sexual morality, family relationships, idolatry, justice, and separation from the practices of the surrounding nations.
Chapters 21โ22 โ Priestly Holiness
Additional requirements concerning the holiness and conduct of the priests and regulations concerning acceptable offerings.
Chapter 23 โ Feasts and Holy Days
Israelโs appointed times, including Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks, Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Booths.
Chapter 24 โ Holy Things and Covenant Community
Instructions concerning the lampstand, the bread of the Presence, and the consequences of blaspheming Godโs name.
Chapter 25 โ Sabbath Year and Jubilee
Instructions concerning the Sabbath year, the Year of Jubilee, land, property, debt, and care for fellow Israelites.
Chapter 26 โ Covenant Blessings and Curses
A covenant call to obedience accompanied by promises of blessing and warnings concerning covenant disobedience.
Chapter 27 โ Vows and Dedicated Things
Regulations concerning vows, dedications, valuations, and things devoted to the LORD.
The Big Picture
Leviticus is not simply a book of strange rules about sacrifices, food, priests, and purity.
It is a book answering a profound question:
How can a holy God dwell among a sinful people?
And as we study it carefully, we begin to see the answer unfolding:
God makes a way for His people to dwell in His presence.
The temporary and repeated provisions of the Mosaic covenant ultimately point us toward the greater reality revealed in Christโthe One whose sacrifice is sufficient once for all.
โFor by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.โ โ Hebrews 10:14
Learning to Pray for Spiritual Growth from Philippians 1:9โ11
Perhaps one of the clearest measures of what we truly desire for the people we love is what we repeatedly ask God to do in their lives.
โAnd it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.โ
โ Philippians 1:9โ11
What do you pray for the people you love?
If someone listened carefully to your prayers for your husband, your children, your friends, your church, or the believers God has entrusted to your care, what would they discover that you most deeply desire for them?
We pray for safety, healing, provision, restored relationships, open doors, protection for our children, strength for marriages, and relief from suffering.
These are good things to bring before our Father.
But Paulโs prayer in Philippians 1:9โ11 confronts us with a deeper question:
Do our prayers reveal that our greatest desire for the people we love is their spiritual maturity and conformity to Jesus Christ?
Paul writes Philippians from imprisonment. He loves these believers deeply. He has invested himself in their lives, labored for their spiritual good, and partnered with them in the advancement of the gospel.
Immediately before recording his prayer, Paul writes:
โFor God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.โ
โ Philippians 1:8
Then Paul allows us to hear what a heart filled with the affection of Christ asks God to do in the lives of others.
He does not begin by praying that the Philippians would escape suffering or experience easier circumstances.
Paul prays for their spiritual growth.
He asks God to increase their love, deepen their knowledge, sharpen their discernment, teach them to recognize what is excellent, make them sincere and blameless, fill their lives with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ, and keep them faithful until the day of Christ.
And all of it moves toward one ultimate purpose:
the glory and praise of God.
This prison prayer gives us more than a glimpse into Paulโs pastoral heart.
It teaches us how to pray for the people we love.
1. A Love That Never Stops Growing
Paul begins:
โAnd it is my prayer that your love may abound more and moreโฆโ
The Greek word translated abound is perisseuล (ฯฮตฯฮนฯฯฮตฯฯ).
It carries the idea of increasing, overflowing, exceeding, or becoming abundant.
Paul is not writing to Christians who have no love. The Philippians have already demonstrated their affection for Paul and their partnership in the gospel.
Yet Paul prays for more.
There is no point in the Christian life when we graduate from the command to love. Spiritual maturity does not mean that we eventually become loving enough.
The more deeply we know Christ, the greater our capacity should become to love the people He has placed around us.
Paul does not explicitly state the object of the Philippiansโ love in verse 9. The Greek text simply says:
แผก แผฮณฮฌฯฮท แฝฮผแฟถฮฝ โ โyour love.โ
Within Paulโs letters, love for fellow believers frequently occupies a prominent place, especially in the opening sections of his letters. Paul commends the saints for their love in Ephesians 1:15, Colossians 1:4, 1 Thessalonians 1:3, and 2 Thessalonians 1:3.
Given Paulโs repeated emphasis upon the love believers should have for one another, and the relational concerns that later emerge in Philippians, love for fellow Christians is certainly included and may be especially prominent here.
But Paulโs prayer reaches even deeper.
He desires a growing Christian loveโlove rooted in God, shaped by truth, and expressed wisely toward others.
When Jesus identifies the greatest commandments, He first commands us to love God with our entire being and then to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Love for God and love for others belong together.
We need love that abounds still more and more.
But Paul does not pray merely for more love.
He prays for a particular kind of love.
2. A Love Governed by Truth
Paul continues:
โโฆwith knowledge and all discernment.โ
The word translated knowledge is epignลsis (แผฯฮฏฮณฮฝฯฯฮนฯ).
It carries the idea of genuine, deep, or full knowledge.
The Reformer John Calvin explained Paulโs meaning:
โPaul means that it is full and complete, not a knowledge of all things.โ
Paul is not praying that the Philippians would simply accumulate more information or become intellectually impressive.
He desires a deepening knowledge that shapes how they live and love.
The word translated discernment is aisthฤsis (ฮฑแผดฯฮธฮทฯฮนฯ).
It refers to moral perception, insight, or the capacity to recognize what is appropriate in a particular situation.
Paul is praying for love with eyes.
Love that sees.
Love that understands.
Love that perceives.
Love that knows how to respond wisely to real people in real situations.
Biblical love is not blind sentimentality.
It is not merely being nice.
It is not avoiding difficult conversations, affirming every decision someone makes, or doing whatever makes us feel loving.
Paul is not praying that the Philippians would become smarter, but wiser in their care for one another.
Genuine love requires spiritual wisdom.
We need discernment to know when to speak and when to remain silent. When to confront and when to comfort. When to intervene and when to wait. When to give generously and when helping in the wrong way might enable destructive patterns.
Without knowledge and discernment, sincere attempts to love can become misguided.
We may offer tenderness without truth.
Or truth without tenderness.
We may give someone what they want when faithfulness requires giving them what they need.
We may avoid necessary conversations because we have confused kindness with silence.
Paul prays for something better.
Love governed by truth and guided by discernment.
Biblical love requires more than good intentions.
We need wisdom from God.
3. A Love That Chooses What Is Excellent
Paul explains the purpose of knowledge and discernment:
โโฆso that you may approve what is excellentโฆโ
The word translated approve is dokimazล (ฮดฮฟฮบฮนฮผฮฌฮถฯ).
It means to test, examine, scrutinize, and determine whether something meets the necessary standard.
Paul prays that the Philippians would develop the spiritual ability to examine the choices before them and recognize what is truly excellent.
Steven Lawson observes that some of the most difficult choices Christians face are not between what is obviously good and evil, but between what is good, better, and best.
That is where discernment becomes necessary.
We have limited time.
Limited energy.
Limited resources.
We cannot meet every need, accept every invitation, pursue every opportunity, intervene in every situation, or say yes to every good thing.
Mature Christian love asks:
What is most excellent here?
What will genuinely serve this personโs spiritual good?
What does faithfulness require in this particular situation?
What will matter most in light of eternity?
What must I say no to so that I can say yes to what God has actually entrusted to me?
Paul does not want the Philippians to stumble through relationships guided only by emotion, pressure, guilt, or the expectations of others.
He prays that their growing love, governed by knowledge and discernment, will enable them to recognize and pursue what is excellent.
We should pray the same for our churches, our spouses, our friends, those we disciple, and our children.
Lord, teach them to recognize what matters most.
4. A Love That Produces Integrity
Paul continues:
โโฆand so be pure and blameless for the day of Christโฆโ
The word translated pure or sincere is eilikrinฤs (ฮตแผฐฮปฮนฮบฯฮนฮฝฮฎฯ).
It communicates genuineness, sincerity, purity of motive, and integrity.
Paul is praying for believers whose lives can withstand examination.
Christians without divided loyalties.
Without religious performance.
Without carefully constructed appearances that conceal contradictory lives.
There must not be an inconsistency between what we confess to believe and how we live.
Our theology and conduct belong together.
Our public Christianity and private character belong together.
Our doctrine and love belong together.
Every area of life should increasingly become part of one integrated whole under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
That is integrity.
Paul also prays that the Philippians would be blameless.
The Greek word is aproskopos (แผฯฯฯฯฮบฮฟฯฮฟฯ).
It carries the idea of being without offense or not causing stumbling.
Paul wants their lives to be marked by such integrity that their conduct does not become an unnecessary obstacle in the spiritual lives of others.
It matters to God how we live.
Forgiveness of sin does not give us freedom to continue carelessly in sin.
The grace that pardons us is the same grace that purifies us.
Our hypocrisy can wound.
Our careless words can discourage.
Our uncontrolled anger can harm.
Our dishonesty can destroy trust.
Our selfishness can place obstacles in the spiritual lives of those around us.
Christian love therefore requires personal holiness.
Paul prays that this integrity would characterize the Philippians:
โโฆfor the day of Christ.โ
His prayer stretches all the way to eternity.
There is always more patience to learn, more kindness to practice, more forgiveness to extend, more selfishness to put to death, more wisdom to gain, and more Christlikeness to pursue.
The whole Christian life is lived in preparation for that great day.
When Christ returns, may He find us loving one another.
5. A Love That Bears Fruit Through Christ
Paul continues:
โโฆfilled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christโฆโ
The Christian life produces fruit.
But notice carefully where the fruit comes from.
Through Jesus Christ.
Paul is not praying for self-generated moral improvement.
He is not asking the Philippians to become better people through greater willpower.
The righteousness visible in their lives is produced through their relationship with Jesus Christ.
This connects beautifully with the opening words of Philippians and with the foundation we established in the first blog of this series.
Paul has already addressed these believers as:
โsaints in Christ Jesus.โ
They belong to Christ.
They are in Christ.
They receive grace and peace from Christ.
And now Paul prays that the life of Christ would increasingly bear visible fruit through them.
The spiritual fruit of righteousness begins to grow when God makes a sinner alive in Christ.
We do not love others in order to make ourselves Christians.
We love because God has made us alive in Christ.
We do not produce spiritual fruit in order to earn acceptance from God.
Spiritual fruit grows because we have been united to Jesus Christ.
The first fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22 is love.
Rebirth is the root.
Love is the fruit.
The Christian life is not the decoration of a dead tree.
It is the fruitfulness of a living one.
And the source of that life is Jesus Christ.
This should deeply shape how we pray.
When we pray for spiritual growth in the people we love, we are not merely asking them to try harder.
We are asking God to produce through Christ what human effort cannot manufacture.
Lord, bear the fruit of Christ in them.
6. A Love That Ends in the Glory of God
Paul reaches the destination of his prayer:
โโฆto the glory and praise of God.โ
Paul begins with love.
But he ends with glory.
The glory of God.
Choosing what is excellent.
Sincerity and blamelessness.
Perseverance until the day of Christ.
The fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ.
And ultimately:
The glory and praise of God.
Christian love is not ultimately about making us appear compassionate.
Spiritual maturity is not about producing impressive Christians.
The fruit of righteousness is not intended to build our reputation.
Everything terminates in the glory of God.
Paul writes:
โSo, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.โ
โ 1 Corinthians 10:31
The Puritan Thomas Brooks wrote:
โThe aim of the obedient soul, in prayer, and praises, and talking, and walking, in giving, and receiving, in living, and doing, is divine glory.โ
Godโs glory must become the master passion of the Christian life.
The way we pray.
The way we speak.
The way we love.
The way we forgive.
The way we serve.
The way we parent.
The way we suffer.
The way we work.
All of life should increasingly be directed toward one great end:
the glory and praise of God.
What Do Your Prayers Reveal About What You Want Most?
Paulโs prayer forces us to examine our own.
What do we most deeply desire for the people we love?
Do I merely want my children to be safe, successful, healthy, well-behaved, and happy?
Do I want my husband to change primarily because his change would make my life easier?
Do I pray more frequently for the physical health of the people I love than for their holiness?
Do I pray for my church to grow numerically without praying with equal intensity that we would grow in love, discernment, integrity, and righteousness?
If someone listened to our prayers, would they know that our greatest desire for the people we love is that Christ would be formed in them?
Paul teaches us to pray beyond circumstances.
That does not mean we stop praying for healing, safety, provision, protection, reconciliation, or relief from suffering.
Our Father invites us to bring every burden to Him.
But our prayers should reach further.
Lord, whatever You do with their circumstances, make them more like Christ.
Increase their love.
Deepen their knowledge.
Sharpen their discernment.
Teach them to recognize what is excellent.
Make their lives sincere and blameless.
Fill them with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ.
Keep them faithful until the day of Christ.
And through their lives, receive glory and praise.
Perhaps one of the greatest ways we can love another person is to pray for what God desires to produce in them.
Behold Christ
Paulโs prayer does not leave us staring at ourselves.
It leads us to Jesus Christ.
The love Paul desires is formed in those who know Christ.
The discernment Paul requests is wisdom God must give.
The righteousness Paul desires comes through Jesus Christ.
The perseverance Paul anticipates continues until the day of Christ.
And the glory produced through transformed lives ultimately belongs to God.
Christ is not standing at the edge of this prayer waiting for us to become better people.
He is at the center of it.
He is the source of the righteousness Paul desires.
He is the One whose life increasingly becomes visible in His people.
He is the One toward whose return the Christian life is moving.
We cannot manufacture this kind of love.
We must receive from Christ what we need in order to give ourselves faithfully to others.
So when we pray for the people we love, we are asking God for something only He can do:
Make them like Jesus.
And through their lives, glorify Your name.
Examine Your Heart
What do my prayers reveal that I most deeply desire for the people I love?
Do I pray more frequently for changed circumstances than for transformed character?
Is my love governed by biblical truth and spiritual discernment, or primarily by emotion, fear, guilt, pressure, or the desire for approval?
Is there consistency between what I confess to believe and how I live?
Am I trying to produce spiritual fruit through human effort rather than depending upon Jesus Christ?
Is the glory of God truly the highest aim of my prayers and my life?
Respond
Choose one person God has placed upon your heart.
Your spouse.
Your child.
A friend.
A church member.
Someone you disciple.
Someone who is suffering.
Someone with whom your relationship is difficult.
For the next week, pray Philippians 1:9โ11 specifically for that person.
Ask God to increase their love, deepen their knowledge, sharpen their discernment, teach them to recognize what is excellent,
Pray
Father, teach me to pray for the people I love according to Your priorities and not merely my preferences.
Let our love abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment. Give us wisdom to recognize the real needs of the people You have placed in our lives and teach us to love them faithfully.
Help us recognize what is excellent and give us courage to choose what is best rather than simply what is easiest, most comfortable, or most approved by others.
Make our lives sincere and blameless. Bring every hidden inconsistency under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and keep our lives from becoming stumbling blocks to others.
Fill us with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. Produce in us what we cannot manufacture ourselves. Keep us faithful until the day of Christ.
And above every other desire, teach us to live for Your glory.
Before Paul teaches us about joy, suffering, humility, contentment, or living worthy of the gospel, he begins by telling us who we are, whose we are, and where everything we need for the Christian life comes from.
โPaul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.โ
โ Philippians 1:1โ2
There are places in Scripture where it is tempting to read quickly.
The opening greetings of New Testament letters can be one of those places.
We see the names of the author and recipients. We read the familiar words grace and peace. Then we hurry ahead, looking for the teaching we assume will begin a few verses later.
But there are no wasted words in Scripture.
Before Paul writes about joy in suffering, the advancement of the gospel, living worthy of the gospel, the humility of Christ, working out our salvation, pressing toward the goal, our heavenly citizenship, or learning the secret of contentment, he begins with two sentences that quietly establish the theological foundation beneath the entire Christian life.
Paul and Timothy are servants of Christ Jesus.
The believers in Philippi are saints in Christ Jesus.
Grace and peace come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Servants of Christ.
Saints in Christ.
Grace and peace from Christ.
These small words reveal an enormous reality.
The Christian life is a life that belongs to Christ, is found in Christ, and is sustained by what comes from Christ.
Servants of Christ Jesus: He Owns Us
Paul begins:
โPaul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesusโฆโ
The Greek word translated servants is douloi, the plural form of doulos.
The word can be translated servant, bondservant, or slave. While each English word carries different associations, the central idea is one of belonging.
A doulos lives under the authority of another.
Paul could have introduced himself in many ways.
He was an apostle.
He was a church planter.
He had suffered for the gospel.
He had received extraordinary revelation.
He had been entrusted with a significant ministry.
He had theological training, Jewish ancestry, religious accomplishments, and a testimony of radical conversion.
But Paul begins Philippians by identifying himself as one who belongs to Jesus Christ.
A servant of Christ Jesus.
Before Paul tells us what he has done, he tells us whose he is.
This confronts one of the deepest assumptions of the human heart: the belief that we belong to ourselves.
Our culture tells us to discover ourselves, define ourselves, express ourselves, protect ourselves, and build lives centered around the fulfillment of ourselves.
The gospel tells us something radically different.
โYou are not your own, for you were bought with a price.โ
โ 1 Corinthians 6:19โ20
Jesus Christ does not merely improve our lives.
He claims them.
He does not become one priority among many competing priorities.
He becomes Lord.
To belong to Christ means that our bodies belong to Him.
Our time belongs to Him.
Our homes belong to Him.
Our marriages, motherhood, work, ministry, gifts, suffering, ambitions, possessions, and plans all come under His authority.
This is not the language of oppression.
It is the language of redemption.
We were once enslaved to sin, unable to free ourselves from its dominion. Christ purchased us with His own blood, brought us under His gracious rule, and made us His own.
The Christian has not moved from belonging to a cruel master to belonging to no master at all.
We have been brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
The question is no longer merely:
What do I want to do with my life?
The better question is:
Lord Jesus, what would You have me do with the life that belongs to You?
Saints in Christ Jesus: He Defines Us
Paul continues:
โTo all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippiโฆโ
The word translated saints is hagioi, the plural form of hagios, meaning holy ones or those set apart for God.
Paul is not writing to a small group of spiritually exceptional Christians.
He is writing to all the saints.
Every believer in Philippi is addressed this way.
The struggling believer.
The mature believer.
The suffering believer.
The believer still learning obedience.
The believer who will need correction.
The believer involved in disagreement.
All the saints.
Why can Paul call ordinary Christians saints?
The answer is found in the three words that follow:
โin Christ Jesus.โ
Their holiness is inseparable from their relationship to Christ.
They have been set apart by God and brought into union with His Son.
Steven Lawson writes:
โBeing in Christ Jesus makes all the difference to everything.โ
Before their conversion, the Philippians belonged to this present evil world and lived under the dominion of darkness. But through the saving work of God, they had been delivered from darkness and brought into vital union and communion with Jesus Christ.
They had been washed in His blood.
Given a new standing in grace.
Made citizens of the kingdom of God.
They were no longer defined by who they had been apart from Christ.
They were now in Christ Jesus.
This little prepositional phrase carries enormous theological weight.
Paul does not merely say that the saints believe about Christ.
Or admire Christ.
Or follow the teachings of Christ.
They are in Christ.
The New Testament repeatedly uses this language to describe the believerโs union with Jesus.
We have died with Christ.
We have been raised with Christ.
We are seated with Christ.
Our lives are hidden with Christ.
We are justified in Christ.
We are being sanctified in Christ.
We will be raised because we belong to Christ.
Christianity is not fundamentally the renovation of the old life.
It is not God helping us become improved versions of ourselves.
The gospel brings us into an entirely new realm of existence.
Once we were in Adam.
Now we are in Christ.
Once we belonged to the kingdom of darkness.
Now we have been transferred into the kingdom of Godโs beloved Son.
Once we stood condemned in our sin.
Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The Philippians lived in a real city.
They lived under Roman authority.
They had families, responsibilities, occupations, struggles, relationships, suffering, weaknesses, and disagreements.
Geographically, they were in Philippi.
But their spiritual location was somewhere else.
They were in Christ Jesus.
Where they lived was not the same thing as where their lives were found.
Later Paul will remind them:
โBut our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.โ
โ Philippians 3:20
The Philippians lived in Romeโs world.
But they belonged to Christโs kingdom.
They lived in Philippi.
But they were in Christ.
The same is true for every believer today.
We live in homes and communities.
We are wives, mothers, daughters, friends, employees, church members, caregivers, and neighbors.
We carry histories.
We experience failures.
We endure suffering.
We receive responsibilities.
We walk through circumstances that profoundly affect us.
But none of those things occupies the position Christ occupies.
Our circumstances describe where God has placed us.
Our responsibilities describe where God has called us to faithfulness.
Our past may explain some of the battles we fight.
But Christ defines who we are.
The Christianโs deepest identity is not found by looking inward.
It is found by looking to Christ.
Grace and Peace From Christ: He Sustains Us
Paul finishes his greeting:
โGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.โ
The Greek word translated grace is charis.
The word translated peace is eirฤnฤ.
These words were familiar features of Paulโs letters, but familiarity should not cause us to overlook their theological significance.
Grace and peace have a source.
They come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Christian life begins with grace.
We are saved by grace.
We stand in grace.
We are strengthened by grace.
We are sanctified by grace.
We serve by grace.
We persevere by grace.
And one day, we will be brought safely into the presence of Christ because the God who began His work in us will bring it to completion.
Everything begins with Godโs initiative.
Everything depends upon Godโs provision.
Everything ends with God receiving the glory.
The Christian life is not merely difficult without the grace of God.
It is impossible.
We cannot manufacture the resources necessary to sustain ourselves.
We cannot produce our own righteousness.
We cannot regenerate our own hearts.
We cannot sanctify ourselves through willpower.
We cannot preserve ourselves by determination.
We cannot carry ourselves into glory.
We need grace.
Grace upon grace.
Grace that saves.
And from reconciliation with God flows peace.
Later in Philippians, Paul will write about the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.
Then he will speak of the God of peace who will be with His people.
But here, at the very beginning of the letter, Paul pronounces grace and peace over the saints.
The Christian does not live from an empty supply.
The fullness of Christโs all-sufficient life flows to those who belong to Him.
We do not begin by grace and then continue by our own strength.
The same Christ who saves us sustains us.
Of Christ. In Christ. From Christ.
The late British theologian J. Alec Motyer draws attention to the exclusive place Jesus Christ occupies in relation to the Christian.
Paulโs opening greeting presents this relationship through three small but significant words:
We are servants of Christ Jesus.
We are saints in Christ Jesus.
We receive grace and peace from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We belong to Him.
We are found in Him.
We receive everything necessary for life with God from Him.
The Christian life is Christ-centered from beginning to end.
Jesus is not merely the One who saves us and then sends us away to build our own lives.
He is not an addition to an identity we have already created.
He is not one relationship among many equally defining relationships.
He occupies an exclusive place.
He is our Lord.
He is our righteousness.
He is our life.
He is our peace.
He is our hope.
He is our sufficiency.
When Something Else Takes the Place That Belongs to Christ
The truth of Philippians 1:1โ2 does more than teach us doctrine.
It examines us.
If Christ occupies an exclusive place in relation to the Christian, then we must ask what we are tempted to place where only Christ belongs.
What defines you?
Is it your marriage?
Your motherhood?
Your children?
Your appearance?
Your ministry?
Your success?
Your failures?
Your suffering?
Your past?
Your political identity?
The approval of other people?
Even good gifts become crushing masters when we ask them to tell us who we are.
Motherhood is a gift.
Marriage is a gift.
Ministry is a gift.
Work is a gift.
Friendship is a gift.
But none of them can bear the weight of becoming our deepest identity.
Only Christ can occupy that place.
Perhaps you are exhausted because you are trying to produce what can only be received from Christ.
You are trying to make yourself righteous enough.
Strong enough.
Useful enough.
Disciplined enough.
Loved enough.
Holy enough.
You are trying to sustain by human effort a life that can only be sustained by divine grace.
Philippians begins by redirecting our eyes.
Before Paul tells us what to do, he reminds us whose we are.
Before he commands Christian obedience, he establishes Christian identity.
Before he teaches us how to rejoice, suffer, serve, persevere, or live worthy of the gospel, he points us to Jesus Christ.
Behold Christ
Look again at Philippians 1:1โ2.
Christ is the Master to whom Paul belongs.
Christ is the One in whom the saints are found.
Christ is the Lord from whom grace and peace come.
Everything leads us back to Him.
The Christian life cannot be understood apart from Jesus Christ because the Christian life does not exist apart from union with Jesus Christ.
We belong to Christ.
We are in Christ.
We receive from Christ.
And perhaps this is where we should begin our journey through Philippians.
Not first by asking how to become happier.
Not first by searching for the secret of contentment.
Not first by learning how to endure suffering.
But by asking a more foundational question:
Do I understand what it means to belong to Jesus Christ?
Because before Paul teaches us about joy, he reminds us where true joy must begin.
In Christ.
Do I think of my life as belonging entirely to Jesus Christ, or are there areas I still insist belong only to me?
What identity am I most afraid of losing?
Where am I trying to manufacture strength, peace, righteousness, or perseverance that I can only receive through the grace of God?
Lord Jesus, forgive me for the ways I have lived as though my life belonged to me. Forgive me for allowing created things, even good gifts, to occupy the place that belongs to You alone.
Content note: This study discusses sexual violence, physical abuse, and trauma in the context of Judges 19 and includes a personal testimony of surviving abuse.
There are chapters of Scripture that comfort us.
There are chapters that encourage us.
There are chapters that strengthen our hope, remind us of Godโs faithfulness, and give us words to pray when our own words fail.
Judges 19 is not one of those chapters.
Judges 19 is meant to horrify us.
There is no deliverer.
There is no victory.
There is no miraculous rescue.
There is no repentance.
There is only a Levite, his concubine, an old man, a violent mob, a night of unspeakable abuse, the death of an unnamed woman, and a nation about to tear itself apart.
Judges 19 is one of the darkest chapters in all of Scripture.
And we should not rush through the darkness.
We should not soften the violence.
We should not turn the suffering of this woman into a convenient illustration.
We should not search so quickly for an encouraging application that we fail to sit beneath the weight of what the text is showing us.
Because Judges 19 is here for a reason.
The book of Judges has been showing us what happens when the people of God reject the rule of God.
Again and again, Israel has done what is right in their own eyes.
They have compromised.
They have worshiped idols.
They have reshaped God according to their preferences.
They have pursued comfort.
They have sought blessing without obedience.
They have built religions they could control.
And now, at the end of the book, we are shown where that road leads.
Israel has become indistinguishable from the nations around them.
Worse still, Israel has become like Sodom.
Before We Read
Before going any further, we need to acknowledge what this chapter contains.
Judges 19 describes sexual violence, abuse, dehumanization, and death.
The Bible records these events.
It does not approve of them.
Scripture is painfully honest about the evil human beings are capable of committing. The Bible does not hide the consequences of sin. It does not sanitize human depravity. It does not pretend that rebellion against God remains private, harmless, or contained.
Sin spreads.
Sin corrupts.
Sin dehumanizes.
And when people persistently reject the authority of God, other human beings bear the consequences.
The unnamed woman at the center of Judges 19 is not merely a literary device.
She is a human being made in the image of God.
She is sinned against.
She is abandoned.
She is violated.
She dies.
And the men surrounding her repeatedly treat her as though her life exists for their convenience.
We should allow the horror of that reality to trouble us.
The text intends for us to be troubled.
In Those Days There Was No King
Judges 19 begins with words we have heard before:
โIn those days, when there was no king in Israelโฆโ
This statement has become the theological backdrop of the final chapters of Judges.
Israelโs problem is not merely political.
Their deepest problem is spiritual.
There is no human king, but more importantly, Israel is living as though there is no divine King.
God has spoken.
God has given His law.
God has established His covenant.
God has told His people how to worship, how to pursue justice, how to treat the vulnerable, how to order their families, and how to live together as His holy people.
Yet everyone continues doing what is right in his own eyes.
Judges 19 shows us what happens when subjective morality reaches its logical conclusion.
When everyone becomes his own authority, the strong eventually decide what happens to the weak.
When personal desire becomes the highest standard, other people become objects to be used.
When Godโs authority is rejected, human dignity does not increase.
It collapses.
A Levite Who Should Have Known Better
Once again, a Levite stands near the center of the story.
That should trouble us.
The Levites had been set apart for service connected to the worship of God.
If anyone should have known the Word of God, it was a Levite.
If anyone should have understood covenant faithfulness, justice, holiness, and the value of belonging to God, it was a Levite.
Yet the Levite in Judges 19 is not presented as a faithful spiritual leader.
He is part of the problem.
The chapter begins by introducing his concubine, who leaves him and returns to her fatherโs house in Bethlehem.
After four months, the Levite travels to persuade her to return.
Her father welcomes him enthusiastically.
For several days, the men eat, drink, and delay the journey.
Eventually, the Levite insists on leaving.
The decision is made late in the day.
As darkness approaches, the servant suggests that they stop in Jebus, the city that would later become Jerusalem.
But the Levite refuses.
Jebus is inhabited by foreigners.
He does not want to spend the night among people who are not Israelites.
Instead, he chooses to continue to Gibeah.
Surely they will be safer among the people of God.
They are not.
When Israel Became Sodom
The travelers arrive in Gibeah, a city belonging to the tribe of Benjamin.
They sit in the town square.
No one welcomes them.
Eventually, an old man returning from his work in the fields sees them and offers hospitality.
Then the story begins to sound disturbingly familiar.
The men of the city surround the house.
They demand that the Levite be brought outside so that they can sexually assault him.
The deliberate connection to Genesis 19 is difficult to miss.
In Genesis, the men of Sodom surround Lotโs house.
In Judges, the men of Gibeah surround the old manโs house.
In Genesis, the mob demands the male visitors.
In Judges, the mob demands the Levite.
The language is similar.
The circumstances are similar.
The depravity is similar.
But there is one devastating difference.
Gibeah is not a Canaanite city.
Gibeah belongs to Israel.
God had called Israel to be holy.
God had separated them from the nations.
God had given them His Word.
God had placed His name among them.
God had called them to display His character to the world.
But now the people who were supposed to be different have become indistinguishable from the people they were commanded not to imitate.
Israel has become Sodom.
This may be one of the most terrifying warnings in the entire book of Judges.
The people of God can live among the things of God, possess the Word of God, use the name of God, and still become increasingly unlike God.
Spiritual privilege does not make anyone immune to spiritual decay.
A people who repeatedly refuse to listen to God can eventually become unrecognizable as His people.
The Failure of Every Man in the Story
There are no heroes in Judges 19.
The men of Gibeah are wicked.
But they are not the only men who fail.
The old man offers the women of the household to the mob.
The Levite sends his concubine outside.
The men abuse her throughout the night.
In the morning, she collapses at the doorway of the house.
And when the Levite opens the door, he says:
โGet up, let us be going.โ
There is no recorded grief.
No tenderness.
No attempt to help her.
No acknowledgment of what she has suffered.
When she does not respond, he places her body on his donkey and returns home.
The woman at the center of the story is repeatedly acted upon.
Men decide where she will go.
Men decide what will happen to her.
Men sacrifice her safety to protect themselves.
Men violate her.
Men speak over her.
Men use her death for their own purposes.
She is never given a voice.
And that silence is part of the horror.
The further Israel moves from the rule of God, the more vulnerable people suffer.
Throughout Scripture, the treatment of the vulnerable is repeatedly connected to the spiritual condition of Godโs people.
When people love God, they are commanded to love their neighbor.
When people fear God, they are forbidden from using power merely for their own advantage.
When people reject Godโs authority, power becomes something to seize, protect, and use.
Judges 19 shows us a society in which nearly everyone is protecting himself.
And the person with the least power pays the highest price.
The Banality of Evil
One of the most disturbing things about the final chapters of Judges is how ordinary everyone seems.
These are not monsters from another world.
They travel.
They eat meals.
They extend hospitality.
They have families.
They speak about God.
They belong to tribes.
They participate in religious life.
And yet beneath the ordinary surface lies profound moral corruption.
Evil does not always announce itself dramatically.
Sometimes it grows quietly.
Compromise after compromise.
Excuse after excuse.
Desire after desire.
People gradually become accustomed to what once would have horrified them.
Sin becomes normal.
Consciences become dull.
People learn to live with contradictions.
They speak the language of faith while living according to their own desires.
The final chapters of Judges show us what happens when rebellion becomes ordinary.
The people do not merely commit isolated acts of sin.
They inhabit an entire moral world in which everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes.
The Woman at the Door
There is an image near the end of the chapter that is difficult to forget.
Morning comes.
The door opens.
And the woman is lying at the threshold with her hands on the doorway.
She had almost reached shelter.
But the door remained closed.
There are times when careful Bible study requires us to resist the urge to turn every detail into a metaphor.
This woman does not need to become a symbol before we are willing to grieve what happened to her.
She was a person made in the image of God.
And she was treated as disposable.
The text does not give us her name.
But God saw her.
The men in this chapter use her.
Ignore her.
Abandon her.
Violate her.
Dismember her.
But the God who inspired Scripture does not allow Israel to forget her.
Her suffering becomes part of the testimony against a nation that has rejected its King.
Her presence in Scripture reminds us that God does not look away from the suffering human beings would prefer to ignore.
The Bible bears witness to victims whom powerful people would rather leave unnamed.
The God Who Saw Me Too
There is a reason I cannot read Judges 19 from a safe distance.
I know what it is like to be sexually abused.
For a long period of my life, I was sexually abused by my father. I was also sexually and physically abused by other men.
I know something of the deep wounds these kinds of sins leave behind.
I know what it is like to carry questions you do not know how to ask.
Does God see me?
Does He care about what happened?
Will there ever be justice?
Am I still worthy of being loved?
For many years, I did not know how to bring those questions to God. I did not know how to process what had happened to me within my theology.
Then I began learning to slow down when I read Scripture.
I stopped rushing past difficult passages.
I stopped assuming that the darkest stories in the Bible were obstacles to faith that needed to be explained away as quickly as possible.
And I began to see something I had missed.
God does not hide what evil does to people.
He does not call evil good.
He does not ask us to pretend that suffering does not matter.
He does not look away from the people others would prefer to forget.
Judges 19 does not allow us to forget this woman.
The text does not give us her name, but God preserved the testimony of what was done to her.
Her suffering is not hidden.
The evil committed against her is not erased.
Generation after generation has been forced to reckon with what happened in Gibeah because God allowed her story to remain in His Word.
And as I learned to see her, I began to understand more deeply that God saw me too.
I thought about Hagar.
She was a woman caught within the sinful decisions and abuses of power of other people.
She fled into the wilderness.
And there, the angel of the LORD found her.
He called her by name.
โHagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?โ
โ Genesis 16:8
Hagar responded by giving God a name:
โYou are a God of seeing.โ
She said:
โTruly here I have seen Him who looks after me.โ
โ Genesis 16:13
Later, Hagar would find herself in the wilderness again, believing she was about to watch her son die.
She wept.
God heard.
And the angel of God called to her from heaven.
These passages began changing the way I understood God.
The God of Scripture is not the author of evil.
He is good.
He is just.
He sees.
He hears.
He knows.
And because He is faithful, He will keep every promise He has made.
That means evil will not be ignored forever.
Those who have harmed others will answer to Godโs perfect justice.
Some of us may see justice in this life.
Some of us may not.
Human courts may fail.
People may refuse to believe us.
Those who committed evil may never acknowledge what they have done.
But there is no hidden thing that will remain hidden before the judgment of God.
The Judge of all the earth will do what is just.
For me, that truth did not make forgiveness unnecessary.
It made forgiveness possible.
I began to understand that forgiveness does not require me to call evil good.
It does not require me to pretend that justice does not matter.
It does not require me to deny what happened.
I can entrust final judgment to the God who sees perfectly, knows completely, and judges righteously.
And I can bring my wounds to Jesus.
The One who sees Hagar in the wilderness is the same God who came near to us in Christ.
Jesus saw women others ignored.
He welcomed people others rejected.
He touched those others considered unclean.
He drew near to the suffering.
He was betrayed.
He was stripped.
He was mocked.
He was beaten.
He was crucified.
And He willingly bore the judgment for sin so that sinners could be reconciled to God.
The cross taught me that God does not minimize evil.
Sin is so serious that the Son of God gave His life to save sinners from it.
And the resurrection taught me that evil, suffering, and death will not have the final word.
Slowly, the Old Testament and the New Testament began coming together for me.
The God who saw Hagar is the God who saw me.
The God who refused to let Israel forget the unnamed woman of Judges 19 had not forgotten me.
The righteous Judge before whom every evil will one day be exposed is also the Father who received me through His Son.
I began to understand that Jesus loved me deeply.
I began to receive the love of God instead of believing that what had been done to me determined my worth.
I began to seek forgiveness for my own sins.
I began learning to forgive others.
And I began trusting God with the justice I could not accomplish for myself.
These passages did not destroy my faith.
They deepened it.
They taught me that I do not need a Bible that looks away from evil.
I need a God who sees it more clearly than I ever could.
I do not need a God who offers shallow explanations for suffering.
I need the God who enters our suffering, judges with perfect justice, saves sinners through the blood of His Son, and promises that one day He will make all things new.
If you have experienced sexual violence, physical abuse, or other deep wounds, or if you love someone who has, I want you to know why I am willing to remain in difficult passages like Judges 19.
It is because I have found that slowing down in these passages has helped me know God more deeply.
You do not have to pretend that evil is less evil in order to trust Him.
You do not have to silence your grief.
You do not have to be afraid of your questions.
Bring them into the light of Scripture.
Learn the character of the God who sees.
Learn the justice of the God who will judge rightly.
Learn the mercy of the Savior who receives sinners.
Learn the love of the Father who gave His Son so that all who trust in Him might be reconciled to God.
My prayer is not merely that you will make it through the difficult chapters of the Bible with your faith intact.
My prayer is that, as you slow down and see the God who has revealed Himself there, your faith will deepen too.
The God who saw Hagar sees.
The God who preserved the testimony of the unnamed woman remembers.
The God who gave His Son saves.
And the King who is coming will judge the world in righteousness.
Come and see the God who sees.
Where Is God?
One of the unsettling realities of Judges 19 is the apparent silence of God.
There is no divine speech.
No angel appears.
No miracle interrupts the violence.
No deliverer arrives.
Where is God?
The answer is not that God has disappeared.
The entire book has shown us a people repeatedly refusing to listen to Him.
God has spoken.
Israel possesses His covenant.
Israel has His law.
Israel knows His commands.
The tragedy is not that God failed to reveal what righteousness looks like.
The tragedy is that Israel has rejected what God has revealed.
We must also be careful not to confuse Godโs silence in the narrative with Godโs indifference to suffering.
The chapter itself stands as testimony against Israel.
God has preserved the record of what happened.
The evil in Gibeah is not hidden from Him.
The suffering of the woman is not forgotten.
Judges 19 shows us what life looks like when human beings insist upon doing what is right in their own eyes.
And it leaves us longing for judgment, rescue, and a righteous King.
Outrage Is Not Repentance
The Levite takes the womanโs body and divides it into twelve pieces.
He sends the pieces throughout the territory of Israel.
The act is horrifying.
The response is immediate.
The people of Israel say:
โSuch a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.โ
Israel is finally shocked.
After years of idolatry.
After generations of compromise.
After repeated rejection of Godโs covenant.
After everyone has done what is right in his own eyes.
Israel has finally found a sin terrible enough to produce national outrage.
But outrage is not the same thing as repentance.
It is possible to be horrified by the sins of others while remaining blind to the sin within ourselves.
It is possible to correctly identify evil and still respond to evil in ways that reveal our own estrangement from God.
That is where Judges 20 will take us.
The nation will gather.
The people will demand justice.
A civil war will begin.
Thousands will die.
And the people who are outraged by Gibeah will continue demonstrating that the deepest problem in Israel cannot be contained within one city.
The problem is everywhere.
The Road to Gibeah Was Longer Than One Night
Israel did not become Sodom overnight.
The violence of Judges 19 is the fruit of seeds planted throughout the entire book.
Israel compromised with the Canaanites.
Israel tolerated idolatry.
Israel abandoned covenant faithfulness.
Israel repeatedly cried out to God when suffering became unbearable, only to return to rebellion when relief arrived.
Israel treated God as a means of obtaining blessing rather than as their King.
By Judges 17, Micah has created his own religion.
By Judges 18, the tribe of Dan has established institutionalized idolatry.
By Judges 19, Israel has become Sodom.
This is the trajectory of sin.
Sin rarely tells us where it intends to take us.
It asks only for the next compromise.
The next excuse.
The next small act of disobedience.
The next moment when we decide that what seems right in our own eyes matters more than what God has said.
Judges 19 forces us to see the destination.
We Need a Righteous King
The book of Judges has shown us judge after judge.
Some were faithful.
Some were deeply flawed.
Some delivered Israel from external enemies while remaining unable to change the hearts of Godโs people.
But now there is no judge.
There is no deliverer.
There is no faithful leader standing between the vulnerable and those who would destroy them.
The repeated refrain tells us what Israel lacks:
โIn those days there was no king in Israel.โ
But Israel does not merely need someone wearing a crown.
Israel needs a righteous King.
A King who will not exploit the weak.
A King who will not sacrifice others to save Himself.
A King who knows the Word of God and obeys it perfectly.
A King who sees the forgotten.
A King who defends the vulnerable.
A King who judges evil without becoming evil.
A King who can deal not only with the enemies surrounding Godโs people, but with the sin dwelling within them.
Judges leaves us longing for such a King.
The gospel tells us His name.
The King Who Gave Himself
The men in Judges 19 preserve themselves by giving up someone else.
Jesus does the opposite.
Christ does not sacrifice the vulnerable to save Himself.
He gives Himself to save sinners.
The Good Shepherd does not abandon the sheep when the wolves come.
He lays down His life for the sheep.
Jesus does not use His power to protect Himself from suffering.
He willingly enters suffering.
He is betrayed.
He is mocked.
He is beaten.
He is condemned.
He is crucified.
Not because humanity is innocent.
But because humanity is guilty.
At the cross, we see both the horror of human sin and the holiness of God.
The cross does not minimize evil.
It reveals how serious sin truly is.
The righteous King bears judgment in the place of His people.
Judges 19 shows us human beings sacrificing others to save themselves.
The gospel shows us the Son of God giving Himself to save sinners.
Jesus Christ is the King Israel needed.
And He is the King we need.
The King Who Sees
Judges 19 reminds us that human beings can overlook suffering.
Communities can normalize injustice.
Religious people can become indifferent.
Powerful people can protect themselves.
Victims can remain unnamed.
But God sees.
God hears.
God knows.
And God will judge rightly.
The gospel does not ask us to pretend evil is less terrible than it is.
The gospel tells us that evil will not have the final word.
Jesus Christ was crucified.
Jesus Christ was buried.
Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
Jesus Christ reigns.
And one day the King who sees every injustice will judge the world in righteousness.
Every hidden thing will be brought into the light.
Every wrong will be answered according to perfect justice.
For those who belong to Christ, the promise of His kingdom means that suffering, violence, injustice, and death will not endure forever.
The King is coming.
Behold Him, Not Me
Judges 19 is difficult to read because it shows us what human beings become when we reject the rule of God.
Israel was called to be holy.
Israel was called to be different.
Israel was called to display the character of God among the nations.
Instead, Israel became Sodom.
The warning should humble us.
We should never assume that religious language, biblical knowledge, church attendance, ministry involvement, or spiritual heritage makes us immune to compromise.
We need more than outrage over the sins of the world.
We need more than moral reform.
We need more than better circumstances.
We need new hearts.
We need forgiveness.
We need righteousness we cannot produce for ourselves.
We need a King.
Judges leaves us searching for Him.
The rest of Scripture tells us His name.
Jesus Christ.
The righteous King.
The faithful Shepherd.
The One who sees the forgotten.
The One who judges with perfect justice.
The One who gave Himself to save sinners.
When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, look to the King.
When the world becomes accustomed to evil, look to the King.
When religious people fail, look to the King.
When human justice proves insufficient, look to the King.
When the darkness seems unbearable, look to the King.
Behold Him.
Heart Check
Am I more skilled at identifying the sins of others than examining the compromises within my own heart?
Have I become comfortable with things that Scripture calls evil?
Are there areas of my life where personal preference has become more authoritative than the Word of God?
Do I assume that being surrounded by Christian things is the same as faithfully following Christ?
How do I respond when obedience to Jesus requires me to protect, serve, or speak for people who have less power than I do?
Do I merely feel outrage over evil, or does the reality of sin lead me toward repentance, prayer, obedience, and trust in Christ?
Where am I tempted to protect myself at the expense of others?
Do I truly believe that Jesus is the righteous King I needโnot only to judge the evil around me, but to save me from the sin within me?
Prayer
Father,
Judges 19 is difficult to read.
The violence is horrifying. The suffering is real. The depth of human sin is difficult to comprehend.
Yet Your Word refuses to hide what happens when people reject Your rule and do what is right in their own eyes.
Search my heart.
Show me where I have become comfortable with compromise.
Show me where I am quicker to condemn the sins of others than to repent of my own.
Guard me from a faith that knows Your Word but refuses to submit to it.
Teach me to see people as those made in Your image.
Give me courage to protect the vulnerable, speak truth, pursue justice, and refuse to make peace with evil.
For those reading who carry wounds caused by the evil of others, draw near to them.
Help them know that You see.
Help them know that You hear.
Help them know that evil is not hidden from You and that Your justice will not fail.
Lead them to the Savior who receives sinners, binds up the brokenhearted, and will one day make all things new.
And when the darkness of human sin feels overwhelming, turn our eyes toward Christ.
Thank You for giving us the King we could never produce for ourselves.
Thank You that Jesus did not sacrifice others to save Himself, but willingly gave Himself to save sinners.
Thank You that He sees the forgotten, receives the repentant, judges rightly, and reigns forever.
