Whether it’s angelic beings showing up unannounced or God himself appearing to troubled prophets and patriarchs or petrified apostles caught in a torrential storm on a fishing boat, the Bible’s most oft-repeated promise goes something like this: “Don’t be afraid.” Those two words — “Don’t fear” or “Fear not” — pepper both testaments, greeting sinners and saints alike with buoyant hope amid life’s perpetual pressures. And while there may not be three hundred sixty-five occurrences of it as some devotional blogs might lead you to believe, its prevalence can’t be overstated. Nor should it.

Life is full of fearful things. Events and crossroads and decisions come with truckloads of fear-inducing thoughts about making the right choice or going the right way. Relationships, career paths, college applications, friend groups, church membership, etc. — seemingly every facet of life as we know it is backdropped by the fear of things not working, of being ostracized, of not fitting in, of not being successful, of being overlooked. As Pixar made sure to remind us in 2010’s Inside Out (easily one of my favorites), everyone has a Fear avatar in their head that keeps you safe when you’re young, but can keep you trapped as you age.

I think whether we’d admit it or not, there’s something we fear. And I don’t just mean like heights or spiders, even though those are legit. I mean the profound existential fears, like mattering in this life or what happens in the next. You know, the kind that keep you awake at 2 a.m.; the kind you don’t have to look for because they find you. Maybe we wouldn’t be apt to admit that there’s a corner of our mind, or maybe multiple corners, where we’ve harbored those fears, let alone put those fears in print. But that’s exactly what my friend Luke Kjolhaug has done with his latest book from 1517 Publishing, Fear Not: How the Gospel Transcends Our Deepest Anxieties.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know Luke over the last few years, initially in pixelated form via the conceits of connection that modernity affords, but then through the much more profound flesh-and-blood association of participating in the same ecumenical pastors’ network — Ken Jones’s brainchild, the Iowa Preachers Project — the purpose of which was to think deeply and communally about how to preach the gospel of Jesus more compellingly. As preachers who have a shared vested interest in the art of preaching, Luke and I bonded over many things that preachers in my orbit do: the law-gospel distinction, Reformation history, etc. But I think what also drew us together to the point where I’d consider him a dear friend is our shared fears and the ways we’ve found solace in the person of Jesus.

The best way I can introduce Luke to you, if he’s in need of an introduction, is to tell you that he’s an earnest, heartfelt preacher, committed to preaching the good news of Christ crucified and risen again for everyday people. This isn’t to comment on his capacity for heady theology that academicians love to argue about; it’s just to say that heady theology often has little bearing on everyday sinner-saints who are desperate for ways to stay hopeful, even as they navigate the everyday onslaught of trouble, anxiety, and fear. This was definitely true in Luke’s first book, Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer for the Christian Life, in which he endeavored to unpack Martin Luther’s simul iustus et peccator, that is, “simultaneously justified and sinner,” and the profound impact that has on daily life. But this non-ivory-tower approach to theology and pastoral ministry is even more apparent in Fear Not.

There are times when life in “East of Eden,” as it’s often called, can feel as though we’re treading shark-infested waters. And whether or not the next fiasco to hit headlines and occupy our attention will be as menacing as Steven Spielberg’s original Jaws or as non-threatening as one of those less successful or memorable sequels, who’s to say? Regardless, fear is palpable and perennial. Fear is pervasive. Open your phone, and you’ll quickly find a cavalcade of things to be afraid of, or at the very least, dread. We live in a marketplace that trades in fear and information about fear-inducing revelations. And we’ve become so saturated in all of this fear talk that we’ve resorted to putting our phobias in our Instagram bios. Fear is just part of our identity now.

There are myriad reasons why this notion feels incredibly modern, a crisis of the now, but this is nothing new. From lying patriarchs to a panicky multitude to runaway prophets to trembling apostles, the prevalence of fear is part and parcel of the human condition post-Genesis 3. There’s a tremor in our souls that manifests as an undercurrent of panic, almost like a low-grade fever. Sometimes it’s obvious; other times, it’s subtle. But always, it’s there. And no amount of Advil can quell it. We might not be able to diagnose it, but we are governed by fear more than we’d ever care to admit.

What makes Luke’s work in Fear Not so resonant is that he dares to show you his fears and faults and foibles. He refuses to write in theological platitudes or with scholarly posturing about all the ways you shouldn’t resign yourself to fear. Rather, he insists on writing as one in the thick of it, as one whose past is marked by fear. “God used my fears to drive me to my knees,” he admits, “to a posture of dependence rather than independence, where I could rely on the strength of another.”1 Fear Not wasn’t a book that was written at a distance. It was written by one who’s been there and back again, whose fears aren’t mastered so much as they are taken to the one who can do something about them.

Without trafficking in clichés or offering saccharine slogans dressed up as spiritual solutions to all those things that cause us to tremble, like a good theologian of the cross, Luke calls a thing what it is, stares down some of our deep-seated fears, even some of his own, and gestures to the one whose love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). “Only the Word of the Gospel,” he says near the end of the book, “is powerful enough to tunnel its way through the subterranean layers of our fear-prone hearts.”2 The fear that haunts us, that lurks inside us, is only deafened when we hear a word outside of us, which is precisely what “Don’t be afraid” is meant to communicate. To put it bluntly, “fear not” on Jesus’s lips isn’t a command so much as it is a promise, and so should it be on the lips of preachers, too.

Much like the gospel itself, Luke’s Fear Not isn’t a book that crushes you. It’s not a book of tips, tricks, and techniques on how to dispel fear from your life. The point isn’t for every reader to suddenly become fearless and live life with reckless abandon like those “Fear Not” bumper stickers. Actually, when you get to the end of Luke’s book, you might have just as many fears as when you started. But what you’ll discover along the way is that fear never has the final say, ever, and that even in all those days, times, and seasons of fear, even when your fears are thick and your faith is thin, you are never alone. There is one who is with you, whose promise of “Don’t be afraid” is invariably followed by, “For I am with you” (Gen. 26:24; Deut. 31:6, 8; Josh. 1:9; Isa. 41:10).

I know I may be a little biased because I wrote the foreword, but Fear Not is a gem of a book. It’s a gift to preachers and those who listen to preachers alike. It’s a book that meets you where you are, in the middle of your fears and doubts and worries. I hope you will get yourself a copy, because, in so doing, you’ll find yourself within earshot of the Word that speaks the same promise to you over, in, and through every fear: fear not. Not because life has suddenly become less fearful or less threatening, nor because your fears have suddenly gone mute. But because the Christ of God has come close with enough grace for every fear you carry. And those whom he holds fast, he never lets go.

Grace and peace to you, my friends.

Title: The God Who Has a Knack for Showing Up in Caves
Text: Psalm 142:1–7
Originally delivered on 6 September 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

After witnessing the Lord split a body of water in two, turn a bitter stream sweet, and even cause a fresh spring to flow from a boulder, the sudden shift to the pragmatic in Exodus 18 feels almost like a banal interruption. This narrative is different from the ones that precede it in almost every way, devoid of any earth-shattering miracles and garnering little attention outside a sequential study of the book as a whole, such as this. Indeed, in many ways, Chapter 18 feels largely out of place, which might not be that far off.

Skipping ahead for a moment, Chapter 19 picks up right where Chapter 17 leaves off, with the multitude setting out from Rephidim and arriving at Mount Sinai (Exod. 17:1, 8; 19:1–2). Chapter 18, however, disrupts the natural flow by having Israel already encamped near the foot of “the mountain of God” by the time the narrative gets underway (Exod. 18:5). What’s more, when Moses explains his role, as he sees it, to his father-in-law, it’s understood that God has already given him the law, or at least part of it (Exod. 18:16).

All of which to say that, for a brief moment, the biblical narrative ceases its chronological ordering and goes off track, begging the question of why. Why stop being chronological? Why is Chapter 18 put here? What’s the point? Why would you interrupt the flow? Well, in so many ways, Moses seems to be telling us something crucial about what it means to be “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:37). Here, he gives us a glimpse at how the Lord not only saves a people but also organizes them around his Word.

1. The House That God Built, and Is Building

As God calls Israel and builds them up into “a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5), we’re also made to see how God does the same thing with his church. Whether via Israel or the church, God’s penchant is to take dead stones and turn them into “living stones,” making them into “a holy priesthood,” the goal of which is “to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus” (1 Pet. 2:5). He is forming and fashioning a people for himself, after his own likeness, who live for him and him alone. However you look at it, the same essential truth comes to the fore — namely, that ours is a God who is keen on liberating slaves and forging them into a congregation that subsists on his words (Rom. 6:17–18).

As Exodus 18 opens, we’re greeted with the arrival of an unexpected guest, one whom we haven’t heard from since Chapter 2. Jethro’s arrival means Moses is reunited not only with his father-in-law but also with his wife and sons (Exod. 18:2). The details of this reunion were likely just as fresh as the day it transpired, filling Moses’s mind with all the emotions of seeing his family for the first time in years. Whenever it was that Zipporah took their boys back to Midian for a spell, I wonder if he questioned whether or not he’d see them again. I don’t want to read too much into it, but there must be a reason why Moses rehearses his sons’ names and the meanings behind them:

The name of the one was Gershom ( for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land”), and the name of the other, Eliezer (for he said, “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh”). (Exod. 18:3–4)

I am inclined to say that laying his eyes on Gershom and Eliezer reminded Moses of precisely what God had done for him. Even though he had been a stranger in a strange land, the Lord was with him every step of the way. He was his help at all times. In other words, Moses’s sons bookend his own life story, one which God had been authoring the whole time.

2. Witnessing to What’s Been Done

This emotional reunion soon turned evangelistic, though (Exod. 18:5–7). Despite Moses and Jethro having much to catch up on, Moses was eager to relay a very specific message to his father-in-law — namely, “all that the Lord had done” (Exod. 18:8). News of Israel’s exodus had spread throughout the surrounding regions, Jethro’s homestead in Midian included. Rumors had circulated about plagues crushing the might of Pharaoh, of seas splitting in half, and of former slaves being led by a personal God, prompting Jethro to pay his son-in-law a visit, perhaps to see if those rumors had any merit to them.

As the priest of Midian (Exod. 18:1), we can infer that he was a figure of some rank and authority in his hometown. And yet, here he comes to hear about what Israel’s God had done for them — an especially surprising revelation once you recall how Midian grew to be a thorn in Israel’s side, leading them into idolatry and eventually oppressing them for nearly a decade (Judg. 6:1ff). But as Moses recites Israel’s story, he places a singular emphasis on “all that God had done” (Exod. 18:1, 8).

3. Grace for Outsiders

It’s noteworthy that there’s no mention of any of the wonders he and Aaron did in Pharaoh’s court, nor of his fortitude in the face of his own people’s reluctance, nor of anything that would’ve drawn any attention to himself. Moses’s message zeroes in on what the Lord did — that’s all that mattered. And it is precisely this message that precipitates the most unexpected response from Moses’s father-in-law:

Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the Lord had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” (Exod. 18:9–11)

For all intents and purposes, this is Jethro’s confession of faith. As he acknowledges the supremacy and might of Yahweh above all other gods, we ought to see this for what it is: a Gentile priest rejoicing and professing belief in the covenant-making God. And lest you think this is just an emotional outburst on Jethro’s part, he doubles down on his confession with a formal offering in the presence of Israel’s elders (Exod. 18:12). This pagan priest is thereby shedding his paganism and embracing the God of Israel, the one true God, who is “greater than all gods” (Exod. 18:11; cf. Ps. 95:3, 97:9; 135:5).

In a truly profound way, this is one of the earliest indications we get that the congregation of Israel didn’t exist for itself. They weren’t supposed to isolate themselves in an echo-chamber of monotheistic piety. Rather, they carried with them the divine promise that in them and through them “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.

What Jesus makes so apparent throughout his earthly ministry and what’s eventually revealed to Peter through a supernatural vision (Acts 10) is that God’s saving acts were meant to be broadcast among the nations, because his kingdom, that is, his church, is comprised of the people whom God has ransomed for his own glory — people “from every tribe and language and nation” (Rev. 5:9; 7:9). Indeed, one of the many reasons Jesus got so flustered with the religious elite of his day was due to their pietistic exclusivity, leading to one of the Lord’s best curveballs when he showed up to show all those stuck-up Pharisees that the kingdom of heaven wasn’t a kingdom just for Jews. It was a kingdom for Gentiles and Samaritans and prostitutes and tax collectors and lepers.

Dale Ralph Davis articulates it like this:

The climax of the deliverance section consists of a gentile confessing his faith in Yahweh as the supreme and saving God. So Yahwheh has not only delivered Israel from bondage but delivered a gentile from blindness. We needn’t wait for those stories of Rahab and Ruth and Naaman — already in and with Israel’s salvation Yahweh is at work bringing light to the nations. Already he is bringing the riff-raff under the truth of God and into the kingdom of God.1

The power and pathos of this scene emerge when we remember that we are all converts, just like Jethro. We’ve all been “grafted in” to the “spiritual Israel” as the “true sons of Abraham” (Rom. 11:17–18; Gal. 3:29). Although we were all alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to all the covenants of promise, we’ve been brought near by the blood of the Lamb, who is Christ himself (Eph. 2:12–13). God is, therefore, fashioning us into “one body through the cross.” He is making us into “fellow citizens and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:16, 19). And the tremors of that good news are felt all the way back in the foothills of Sinai.

4. The Unbearable Burden of Ministry

But then the scene shifts, with Moses waking up to business as usual (Exod. 18:13). As the leader of the people of God, and the one who received God’s laws on the mountain, Moses understood his role was to govern the people by hearing from them and interpreting God’s words for them. This proved to be an arduous task, as is emphasized by the repeated phrase “morning till evening” (Exod. 18:13–14). As Moses sat down to undertake this enormous responsibility, Jethro noticed he did so alone (Exod. 18:14). He was shouldering the burden of shepherding God’s people all by himself, prompting his father-in-law to want to know why. “What is this that you are doing for the people?” he inquires.

Instead of answering that question, though, Moses just proceeds to further explain what it was that he was doing. “Because the people come to me to inquire of God,” he rationalizes, “and that’s just how we’ve always done it since God has given us his law” (cf. Exod. 18:15–16). Moses’s sense of responsibility is honorable, to be sure, as he understands his momentous task to serve as God’s mouthpiece, the channel by which and through which God’s words are made known to God’s people (cf. Exod. 4:15–16). And yet, Jethro perceived that what he was doing was neither good nor sustainable:

What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. (Exod. 18:17–18)

One man attempting to settle disputes and function as the voice of God for two million people is a short road to burnout. This was a burden that was too big for Moses to bear on his own shoulders, and the longer he attempted to carry it by himself, the sooner it’d crush him. And rather than being a comment on Moses’s ability or supposed lack thereof, this is a fitting commentary on the weightiness of his God-given assignment.

Jethro recognized the significance of Moses’s mantle, perhaps more so than even Moses did, at least in this moment (Exod. 18:19–23). Even though the priesthood hadn’t officially been established yet, his son-in-law was essentially acting as Israel’s go-between. He was their representative before the Lord, the one who’d been charged to admonish them in all of God’s words so that they would know how God intended them to live. But in that moment, Moses was getting entangled in the minutiae of daily disputes. The importance of hearing and interpreting the Word was getting lost in all the petty squabbles of a growing congregation.

So, to alleviate his burden, Jethro suggests a series of deputized and able-bodied men to help govern the people (Exod. 18:21–22). In so doing, Moses’s load would be lightened, the community would be preserved from the pitfalls of leadership burnout, and, most importantly, the ministry of the Word would flourish. And to his credit, Moses does exactly that (Exod. 18:24–27). Jethro soon departs the Israelite campsite, ending his involvement in the biblical narrative and leaving behind a community compellingly centered on the words of God.

Unfurled throughout this narrative is the way in which God forms and preserves his people by situating his words at the core of who and what they are. Notwithstanding all the other things Moses could get himself involved in, representing the people and making known the Word were paramount — and leave it to the Lord to have a Gentile priest from Midian to help him see that. But the point is that this is still true for the church right now.

5. Preserving the Ministry of the Word

The early church faced a crisis eerily similar to the one that plagued Israel in the foothills of Sinai. As the word of the gospel and the hope of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth spread like wildfire, changing lives and liberating sinners from the clutches of sin and death, the apostles soon became overwhelmed by the burgeoning congregation that soon fell under their care. The church’s numbers were increasing so rapidly that a cavalcade of practical matters soon became overlooked or incorrectly prioritized, to the detriment of the rest of the body (Acts 6:1).

Thus, The Twelve, led by Peter, summoned everyone together to institute a better method to meet everyone’s needs without neglecting what was of chief importance — namely, “prayer and the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). Their solution was to identify and appoint “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (Acts 6:2–6) — a.k.a. able men, who fear God and are trustworthy (Exod. 18:21; cf. Deut. 1:15; Acts 15:23; 2 Tim. 2:2) — who could lighten the apostles’ load, thereby preserving the growing Christian community and helping the ministry of the Word to flourish. The rest of the congregation gladly agreed to this plan, and the church thrived as a result (Acts 6:7).

Accordingly, even in the earliest days, God had in mind what the community of faith was going to look like: a congregation centered around his words and sharing the responsibility for telling all that he had done.

6. The Word Is What Matters

The Word is what matters. This is what carries on when everything else gives way. While there are many traditions in the life of the church that can be held with open palms, God’s Word isn’t one of them. He has ordained his church to be an organism that keeps the Word absolutely central, not one that pushes it to the margins for the sake of the pragmatic (Eph. 4:11–12). The community that God has been forming since the days of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness has always been bigger than anyone could ever imagine, and it has always been held together by one thing. Not the brilliance of its leaders, the charisma of its preachers, nor the efficiency of its programs, but always, and only, and forever, by the Word — the Living Word of God, which is made known to God’s people, and which goes out to the nations.

This is what Jethro came to hear; it’s what Moses was called to make known; it’s what the apostles refused to surrender; and it’s what the church gathers around every Lord’s day. God’s Word holds God’s people together, both now and forever. And while Jethro rejoiced when he heard what God had done at the Red Sea, the church rejoices at something greater since we have heard what God has done at the cross, where the true and better Exodus transpired, where our slavery to sin was ended, and where we were freed.

What changed Jethro is still what changes us. It’s not some manual of spiritual wisdom or moral code. It’s the Word about what God has done, and the marvel is that that Word has a face, and fingers, and hair, and a forehead that bleeds. That Word has come to where you are to bring you to himself (John 1:14). We may be the “church in the wilderness,” but we’re not lost. We have a Word who brightens our every step (Prov. 3:5–6), and so long as that is what we gather around and revel in, declaring all that God has done, we will endure.

What if our efforts to better Christians are actually taking our eyes off Christ? In this edition of Ministry Minded, I sit down with Justin Perdue to talk about just that, as well as how the Bible’s message of “Christ for you” is understood through the law-gospel distinction and why that distinction is so important for pastoral ministry and the life of the church. Despite what you might hear or think, the church doesn’t need a new message for each new cultural moment. We just need the gospel that tells us Christ is enough.

Justin lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife Michelle and their four children, where he serves as the lead pastor has served as lead pastor of Covenant Baptist Church since it was constituted in 2015. You can follow him on Twitter/X and Instagram, and on his website tethered.org.

Resources:
Romans, Robert Haldane
Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Martin Luther
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

Sponsor:
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Credits:
Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
Composer: DJ Quads, soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
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Title: Saving the Best for Last
Text: John 2:1–11
Originally delivered on 30 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

A while back, I considered the moment when Jeremiah was called into prophetic ministry. Before he was even born, God had appointed him to bring God’s words to God’s people (Jer. 1:4–5).1 That is, he was called to be a preacher — to proclaim the words of the Lord that “pluck up and break down, that destroy and overthrow” (Jer. 1:10). Of course, Jeremiah didn’t hide how reluctant he was to take up this assignment, citing his inexperience and ineloquence as sufficient reasons why God should look for someone else (Jer. 1:6). However, both “reasons” are brushed aside and deemed irrelevant, as far as God’s purposes are concerned.

But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
(Jer. 1:7–10)

As consoling as this moment was, there was surely a residue of trepidation stemming from the words that had been put into Jeremiah’s mouth. The time had come for God’s people to reap what they had long sown through decades upon decades of iniquity, idolatry, and vice. Disaster was on its way (Jer. 1:13–15), which, as you can imagine, didn’t earn Jeremiah any popularity contests. Exacerbating his misgivings concerning his new God-given assignment was the very message he was appointed to proclaim, which wasn’t going to be well received.

1. The Word That Wrecks Us

In fact, as the Lord informs him, his own people will end up fighting against him and his message, even as he preaches the most urgent, necessary words they could ever hear (Jer. 1:19). Jeremiah’s undertaking would be like going to war for people who are throwing rocks at you the whole time. That his task was difficult is an understatement, leaving little to the imagination as to why he is often referred to as “The Weeping Prophet.” Part of me wonders if this young prophet knew what he was in for. I really doubt that he did.

God tells him that he has put him in a position to speak authoritatively to some of the most powerful people on the world scene (Jer. 1:10). And he wasn’t called to dote upon them, entertain them, or merely enlighten them — he was tasked with breaking them down and bringing them to their knees by announcing God’s words to them, words that “pluck up and break down, destroy and overthrow.” The image of something being plucked up paints a violent scene. When a tree stump is unearthed, it leaves the surrounding ground in shambles, with roots and twigs covering the scene like a messy crime scene.

With similar brutality, God’s inflexible word of law leaves sinners in shambles, with nary a smidgen of hope left that they might be able to save themselves. That notion is swiftly overthrown as soon as we come face to face with God’s uncompromisingly holy law, which, as Stephen H. Tyng once said, is “a description of himself.”2 Far from functioning as a ladder to ascend into the heights of the Father’s love and favor, the law is a mirror,3 revealing to every onlooker the blistering truth of their sin and sedition. For preachers and prophets, the law is an albatross, ringing in the ears and souls of those who hear, leaving them exposed and wanting. Christopher J. H. Wright puts it like this:

Jeremiah’s heaviest task would be delivering words of searing rebuke and judgment, tearing down strongholds of political and religious arrogance and prejudice, dismantling traditional certainties of faith, and announcing the uprooting of a whole nation and the destruction of its most precious assets. But out of the dug soil new planting could begin.4

2. The Word That Raises Us

Jeremiah’s commission, of course, didn’t stop at announcing words that “pluck up” and “break down.” Integral to his errand are words that build and plant, and lead to new life (Jer. 1:10). “The final two verbs of Jeremiah’s call, ‘to build and to plant,’” Philip E. Thompson comments, “bespeak an assurance that God can work newness ex nihilo and create historical possibilities out of unmitigated chaos.”5 Out of the crater of his people’s failure and faithlessness, God speaks — through measly mouthpieces — that which refreshes and restores. “God speaks,” writes Jonathan A. Linebaugh, “to the ungodly and the dead; and this word, this gift, impossibly, creates righteousness and makes alive.”6

When the words of God go forth, an oasis springs up in the desert and gardens flourish in the wasteland. In the echo of “Thus saith the Lord,” sinful corpses are given new sinews and skin, and new life, a feat that has nothing to do with the messenger and everything to do with the Lord himself.7 “God’s words are impregnated with his power,” J. Kent Edwards insightfully says. “And when God speaks, things happen. They are an effectual cause. When God speaks, results must occur.”8 The words that have been put into the mouths of God’s mouthpieces are teeming with creative and restorative resonance. It’s his words that never return void (Isa. 55:11), not those of the preacher.

3. The Only Words Worth Saying

This, to be sure, is enormously relieving. If the hope of building and planting something new, pristine, and Edenic was up to the eloquence of God’s prophets, his people would surely be subjected to ruin and oblivion. But the words that fashion beauty from ashes and life from corpses are words of promise that never fail (Jer. 31:31–34). They are words of gospel — of good news — the refrain of which isn’t “Do this and live,” but “Here is the one who makes you alive.” This is the word that has been put into the mouths of the Lord’s preachers. Edwards says it well:

It seems that our job, the job of the preacher, is not to speak one’s own words, but to speak the words of God to the world. It is God’s words that make the difference. It is God’s words that make a preacher powerful . . . When God asks us to speak he doesn’t ask us to speak our words, he asks us to speak his words. And when we speak his words, our words have a supernatural power and authority that they never could have otherwise. We don’t speak on our authority and our power, we speak with God’s authority and God’s power.9

This is why the Lord puts a premium on his words as he invites Jeremiah to give voice to them among his people (Jer. 1:2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 17). The point is, he wasn’t commissioned to scratch all the itching ears of God’s people by telling them only what they wanted to hear. Rather, he was sent by God to preach God’s words to them — words that both destroy and build up; that pluck up and plant. And the only words that can accomplish both of those things belong to the one who brought everything that exists into existence with a mere word.

Twentieth-century American Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson once said that “a text is understood as biblical text only when it casts us down and raises us up, and when we grasp that it is doing this. A sermon is a real sermon only when it casts down and raises up.”10 Jeremiah’s prophetic call, therefore, isn’t a one-off moment. Unique though it was, it wasn’t wholly exclusive. Rather, it is indicative of the ongoing means by which and through which the light pushes back the darkness, love is poured out on the ruined, mercy finds the rebels, and life is given to the dead.

This past Sunday, I finished a thirty-five-part sermon series covering the Book of Exodus. This venture, which began in August 2025 and concluded in August 2026, almost a year later to the day, was embarked upon to see what the Old Testament and, more specifically, what the most formative book in the lives of God’s covenant people might have to say to the church of today. Far from being a book of Sunday school highlights and flannel graph favorites, Exodus is a book that reveals who we are and, more so, who God is. It gives all God’s people, both then and now, an incandescent glimpse of the One who calls them to himself to enjoy him, serve him, worship him, and become preoccupied by him.

This is why, among many other reasons that are too numerous to count, the Old Testament broadly and Exodus specifically can’t just be “unhitched” from the life of the church. (Let the reader understand.) John Cumming, a Scottish clergyman who ministered in the nineteenth century, once wrote of Exodus, “If this Book were expunged from the annals of the history of the world, we should have lost the most striking and impressive proofs of the providential, the gracious, and the merciful government of God.”1 Despite not being taken up by the same sense or even the same obligation for all the rites and ceremonies and the burning of incense and the slaughtering of lambs that appear throughout, what undergirds the pages of the narrative of God’s people being released from bondage and brought to the mountain of God is a narrative that defines us as well.

There are, perhaps, some, or more than some, that are daunted by books like Exodus, what with its history and antiquity so apparent. What’s helpful to remember, though, is that there is an interpretive framework that is able to cut through what might otherwise be forever opaque — namely, that all of this concerns the Christ of God. Jesus’s statement in Luke 24 works forwards and backwards, opening the minds of his followers, from the wilderness wanderings to Jerusalem to the small-town church along Route 66, to discern God’s Word through the prism of God’s self-disclosure, which always culminates in Jesus. That’s what he has been up to the whole time. From Genesis onward, ours is a God who delights to show his people who he is.

Reading Exodus, therefore, is another entry in that program of God to unfurl his purposes for this world and this life, all of which hold together in the person of Christ. We, of course, living in the New Testament age, are benefited even further from the fact that we have further revelation of how that revealing has taken place. “When you read Exodus,” to cite Cumming again, “read it especially with the inspired commentary of the Epistle to the Hebrews lying beside it.”2 Armed with the Word and filled with the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 2:6–16), Christ’s disciples are able to read the history of the formation of the people of Israel and detect ways in which Christ is doing the same in them. He is calling them to himself and shaping them into a kingdom of priests, whose beings are preoccupied with their King.

It’s apt that Cumming recommends reading Hebrews in conjunction with Exodus, precisely because the author of that New Testament epistle goes to great lengths to demonstrate the superiority of Christ over his Old Testament prototypes, chief of which is the Tabernacle. When God the Father conveys his intention to dwell in the midst of his people (Exod. 25:8), he is not only proclaiming his desire for a place for his people to worship and commune with him, but he is also foretelling what will become true when God’s Son comes in the “true tent” of his flesh to minister to sinners and sufferers through his death and resurrection (Heb. 8:1–2). All those copies and shadows fade once the substance, who is Christ, arrives on the scene (Heb. 8:5; Col. 2:17).

Cumming, though, takes this thread a step further in his devotional reading on Exodus 40, asserting the fallacy of Christian churches that are beholden to the types and customs of the Old Testament now that the antitype has come. Here’s how he puts it:

You will see from that Epistle that a Christian church after the model of the ancient tabernacle would be in the letter most scriptural, but in fact most unscriptural and antichristian; because all these things have here had their fulfilment; and when the antitype comes, the type disappears; when the sun rises, the stars retreat; when the fruit is ripe, the blossom withers and falls away. The end and the object of this institute is come, and to keep it up still is to try to expunge two thousand years or three thousand years from the world’s history, and to try to make ourselves Jews in the Christian and New Testament dispensation . . .

For instance, the altar of brass on which sacrifices were offered is now lost in what is called by the apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the true altar — Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Then propitiatory sacrifices are now done away, for the simple reason that a perfect sacrifice has been offered — a sacrifice whose merits fill all time, and consecrate all space; and so perfect that it needs not to be offered year by year in order to do what the Levitical sacrifices could not do; so perfect that it is as available eighteen hundred years after it has been offered, as if it had been offered this very day. We do not want these sacrifices; the end of them is come; the perfection of them is arrived; they lose their place, they cease to be appropriate, because that which they were meant to foreshadow is come; and now Aaron, and Moses, and Levi, disappear, and lose their function, their mission, and their office, in the splendor of the appearance of that Great High Priest, who, by one sacrifice, offered once for all, has redeemed the souls, and forgiven the sins of all that believe in his blessed name.3

Far from a relic in a biblical museum of ancient writ, Exodus is living and active, lurching forward until the Christ of God — the true priest, the true lamb, the true tent where sinners meet the Father — arrived to bring all this to bear for us. Instead of a book regurgitating stories about Moses and Aaron and lambs laid on altars and seas being split open, we’re made to see that all of it points us to Jesus, the one who’s been there all along (Jude 1:5).

Grace and peace to you.

Title: I Am Here, and I Always Will Be
Text: Exodus 40:1–38
Originally delivered on 23 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

The question at the heart of Exodus 17 incisively encapsulates the human condition. Amid yet another sequence of less-than-ideal circumstances, Israel cries out, “Is the Lord among us or not?” And if that question feels familiar, there’s likely a good reason for that. What I’ve learned through studying the first half of Exodus is that humanity hasn’t changed all that much from ancient times till now. Indeed, drawing a hard line of distinction between the ages is more than a little misleading, because although we may be separated by thousands of years of history and just as many advancements in technology or changes in politics or developments in culture or miles in geography, we aren’t that much different from those who populated the earliest days of civilization.

Our clothes may be different, but our temperaments are pretty much the same. Whether it’s ancient Mesopotamia, medieval Europe, or modern America, the human heart and mind still fall prey to the same sets of fears, wants, and worries. The human condition hasn’t evolved beyond trembling because we’ve looked too far ahead or reposed in the romanticized warmth of the past. No matter the era, life feels incredibly fragile. And when crises strike or hit a tad too close to home, we are given to interrogating God with a familiar string of questions. “Is the Lord among us or not?” Is he actually with us? Is he there? Does he know what we are going through or what we’ve been through? Or does he even care? Where is God in this?

1. When God Feels Far Away

These are very natural, very human inquiries, ones I’d wager you’ve asked a time or two yourself. We’ve all been through the “stuff” of life. Whether it’s a flat tire, a cancer diagnosis, a divorce, tragically losing a loved one, or the onset of war and the impending disintegration of society’s moral compass, the point is that there are times when whether or not God is among us feels legitimate. There are times when he feels very far away, infinitely distant from what we’re going through. Our circumstances overwhelm us, bottlenecking our hope till all we can see are conditions we’d rather escape, prompting us to cry out, “God, where are you?” Is the Lord among us or not?1

As genuine and even understandable as this question is, it still stems from the menace known as unbelief. Our faith is constantly imperiled by the residual unfaith that lurks within us. What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Throughout Chapters 14, 15, 16, and now 17, the congregation of God’s people go from the highs of seeing Yahweh rescue them at the Red Sea to the lows of the dry spell at Marah, only to repeat that same cycle all over again. It’s “I believe” with a chaser of unbelief, which, if we’re honest, is what most of our lives feel like.

Hopefully, we can be candid enough to admit that Israel’s plight isn’t beyond us. In many ways, we’re just like them. As quick as we are to praise the Lord on Sunday, we just as quickly mutter curses under our breath when things don’t go our way on Monday. And whether we realize it or not, those moments are instances of unbelief.

2. When Unbelief Takes Over

This, of course, is what sin most truly is. Sin isn’t necessarily doing sinful things. Rather, sinful actions are symptoms of an unbelieving heart. They’re signs of something wrong at a deeper level, at the level of the soul. Living for ourselves, taking what isn’t ours, lying to others, and puffing ourselves up are all side effects of the disease of sin, which has infected us all. But the sin underneath all other sins is unbelief, that is, not taking God at his word (Gen. 3:1). Ever since that tragic afternoon in Eden, humanity has had a terrible time trusting in the words of God. “Did God actually say that? Did he really mean that?”

Thus, despite God’s promise that he would be with them and that he’d go before them (Exod. 13:21–22), and despite God reinforcing that promise by fighting for them at the Red Sea shoreline (Exod. 14:13–14), upon arriving at Rephidim, a new yet familiar crisis provoked their pitiful cry, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exod. 17:7).

As their journey drew them further south along the Sinai peninsula (and further away from Canaan, I might add), the Israelites found themselves in somewhat derivative territory, with the water supply running dry (Exod. 17:1–3; cf. 15:22–27). But instead of believing in the God who had shown himself more than trustworthy up to that point, they reverted to not only grumbling (again), but also to “quarreling” (Exod. 17:2). Their agitation has increased since last time. Now, they’re not just griping like hangry kids in the backseat during a long road trip — they’re becoming verbally and even physically contentious. In fact, when Moses prays to God to voice his concern about what’s going on, he fears his countrymen are about to stone him (Exod. 17:4).

This, of course, isn’t the first time Israel has been desperate since fleeing Egypt, but they’ve never been “ready to grab rocks and chuck them at their leader” desperate. They’ve sunk to a new low, one which brings out the worst in them. Moses perceives, however, that all their squabbles are really with the Lord. “Why do you quarrel with me?” he pushes back. “Why do you test the Lord?” (Exod. 17:2). Their lack of belief in the Lord’s provision — which he has already made glaringly obvious — puts the people of God in dire straits.

3. Grace from the Rock

As is always the case, though, amid his people’s severest dilemmas, God intervenes. In this case, he steps in and tells Moses to go on ahead of the congregation, along with the elders, to “the rock of Horeb” (Exod. 17:5–6). Upon finding it, he’s supposed to hit with his staff to create a spring from which the people can drink. “Horeb,” of course, is another name for the mountainous region of Sinai, the very terrain where the Lord showed up in the burning bush to commission Moses to lead Israel out of bondage. It’s also where the Lord will soon descend to establish his covenant and convey his laws to his people (Exod. 19). And it’s also where the Lord will eventually manifest in a “still small voice” to a depressed, exasperated prophet (1 Kings 19). In other words, God has a propensity for showing up here and showing his people who he is.

After alerting Moses to the existence of a specific rock within that rocky territory, and that one strike is all that it’d take for water to come gushing out of it, that’s exactly what happens. “‘I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb,’” declares the Lord, “‘and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.’ And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel” (Exod. 17:6). The instrument of choice is none other than the staff Moses had with him all the way back in Chapter 4, the very staff that God turned into a snake and back into a staff right in front of his befuddled eyes (Exod. 4:2–5). It’s also the same staff that was used throughout the plagues, most notably when it struck the Nile and turned it into a river of blood (Exod. 7:17–20).

The point is that this staff is no magic wand he picked at his local Ollivanders. It’s just a shepherd’s staff, a weather-beaten crook that had formerly been used to corral stubborn sheep on his father-in-law’s homestead. And yet, this very ordinary staff became the instrument of God’s power, the visible token of Yahweh’s judgment. With staff in hand, God’s servant both turned the Nile into blood and made water spring from a rock. To be sure, the power to do both had nothing at all to do with Moses. As he clutched the staff in his hands, it was an object lesson for belief, for faith, for taking God at his word. By faith, therefore, the rock was struck, and the people beckoned to drink from it.

In a miracle of grace, God’s people are nourished by something only God could do, by something only he could provide. And notably, God provided for them when they least deserved it. Instead of waiting for Moses to whip the Israelites into shape or delaying his provision of water till they got their act together, even while his people were spitting complaints and rebelling against him, God provided for them. Even while they questioned whether he was among them or not, he showed them that he had never left. The rock at Horeb is struck by the staff of the Lord’s judgment to quench his people’s thirst.

4. The Battle Belongs

But Israel’s trial isn’t over just yet. Their critical water supply is compounded by a surprise incursion from the Amalekites (Exod. 17:8). This moment constitutes Israel’s first military engagement, a daunting notion for a nation of former slaves. But after drawing up a quick battle plan, Moses sends Joshua, his eventual successor, to lead the charge in the valley, while he scrambles to the summit of a nearby hill, along with Aaron and Hur, presumably to pray (Exod. 17:9–10). And just so no one misses what’s going on here, in an unmistakable sign of God’s omnipotence, Israel’s only able to prevail so long as Moses raises his arms high above his head, with staff in hand. If he happens to lower them, the tide would quickly turn against them (Exod. 17:11).

Moses is only human, though, and the battle is long, so his arms soon gave way, which is when his two hilltop companions prove their worth, along with their resourcefulness, jumping into action and repositioning a boulder for Moses to lean on before putting themselves under his arms to hold them up for him (Exod. 17:12–13). It’s a breathtaking scene, for sure, resulting in Israel winning the day and overwhelming their attackers in a single afternoon. But what happens next is telling:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exod. 17:14–16)

After the dust settles on Israel’s first skirmish, God tells Moses to put it all “in a book” so that Joshua and everyone after him might always set in front of their eyes not Joshua’s military acumen, nor Moses’s ability to pray, nor even Aaron’s forearm strength, but God’s prevailing grace. He wanted Moses to chronicle these events so that every ensuing generation would know that this triumph was the Lord’s, and his alone. By faith, the staff is raised, and the people prevailed.

5. The Banner Over Us

Inspired by the graphic illustration of whose might made their victory possible, Moses constructs an altar and gives it a name: The Lord Is My Banner. That place, he says, is the stomping ground of none other than Jehovah-Nissi, the place where the staff of the Lord was raised on high as Israel’s ensign amid the fray. “Banner,” of course, alludes to a pole or a flagstaff, something that’s lifted up for all to see, especially in the heat of battle. The sight of their standard still aloft signaled to fight on. A banner was a rallying point, something around which those who belonged to it would come together, which helps us discern Moses’s message.

The “banner” or rallying point for God’s people isn’t their striving or ability, nor their tenacity, nor their fortitude, nor anything to do with them. “The victory,” J. Alec Motyer says, “was to be remembered, not for Joshua’s leadership, nor his troops’ valour, but for the Lord’s gift of victory (Exod. 17:15) coupled with his assurance of victories yet to come (Exod. 17:14).”2 No, God’s people are made to rally around God himself, in whose power they are provided for, and by whose power they prevail. In other words, this entire sequence at Rephidim is a vivid demonstration that the congregation of God’s people — which includes us, the church — is made up of those who rally around the work of the God who is both among them and for them. No matter how deep the crisis or how sharp the conflict, God’s people are beckoned to look to Jehovah-Nissi. And this is just as true for us right now as it was for Israel back then.

6. The Cross Is the Answer

All of this takes on deeper resonance for us once we realize what this scene preaches to us. As Paul plainly tells us, all of Israel “drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). This moment, like every other moment in history and in Scripture, is one that preaches Christ to us. Just as water flowed from the rock that was struck, so do streams of living water flow from Christ’s side, the chief cornerstone who was judged in our stead. A river of relief, which the people didn’t deserve at all, gushed from the rock that endured the staff of God’s judgment. Similarly, a river of redemption pours from the Savior’s head, feet, and hands, as Christ the Rock feels the condemnation we were owed.

Indeed, just as Israel received God’s provision while they were still complaining, so, too, does Christ die for us, even while we’re still so weak and ungodly and full of sin (Rom. 5:6, 8). The good news is that God doesn’t wait until we get our act together prior to providing relief. In the middle of our doubt, confusion, rebellion, and sin, God in Christ shows up to take all the judgment we deserved and provide all the holiness necessary for a right relationship with him. As the late Robert Capon once put it, “The only way to solve the problem of evil is for God to do what in fact he did: to take it out of the world by taking it into himself.”3 And in so doing, he rescues our lives and nourishes our very souls with incessant streams of grace.

What’s more, the staff that hit the rock is also the staff that Moses lifts up, gesturing to the Lord who is raised as a “banner” over his people. It’s his power and promise that rally his people to himself, forging them into a people of faith, which is precisely what Christ is and does for us. As the prophet Isaiah tells us, it is none other than the “root of Jesse,” or Son of David, who “shall stand as a signal for the peoples” and “a signal for the nations,” assembling all “the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah, from the four corners of the earth” (Isa. 11:10, 12). The only banner that gathers people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” to itself is the banner of God’s love for the world (Rev. 7:9–10), which is Christ crucified. “In Jehovah-nissi,” Henry Law once proclaimed, “faith adores Christ Jesus as its Banner.”4

He is God’s “banner,” the signal of the salvation that belongs to the Lord alone. He is the one who was “lifted up” on the cross for us (John 3:15). There on the cross, hanged and mutilated, is the ultimate realization of Jehovah-Nissi for us, because it is precisely there that all of our sins are “utterly blotted out” by him (Exod. 17:14 LXX; cf. Col. 2:13–14). What God did to Amalek in the Rephidim valley is what God did to your sin on a mount called Calvary. That’s where your miserable résumé of sin, strife, pride, and rebellion was canceled, wiped clean, so much so that now there’s no “memory” of it “under heaven” (Exod. 17:14). “I, I am he,” says the Lord through his prophet, “who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isa. 43:25).

Thus, in all your crises and conflicts, look away from everything else and look to the God whose banner over you is love (Song of Sol. 2:4), whose love for you is Christ, and whose grace is more than enough to provide in your weakness and prevail over your failures. “God,” concludes Capon, “in his crooked wisdom has not taken the disasters out of life, he has become our Life in the midst of the disasters.”5 The question of whether or not the Lord is with us or among us is definitively answered by the cross. When you’re left wondering about God’s presence or plans, when you find yourself in the grip of unbelief, the only remedy is to lift your eyes to the place where God has already given you his answer.

From the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 to today, there is a nagging stream of questions surrounding the church and its relationship to the Torah. Are Christians required to keep all the feasts and food laws and Sabbath ordinances just like God’s people of old did? Or are we living in sin if we don’t? Dr. R. L. Solberg and I consider these questions and why they can be answered by God’s Word itself. By looking at Hebrews, Galatians, and other Scriptures, we talk about why Christianity isn’t a checklist but a relationship with a Savior who tells you you’re his.

R. L. Solberg, Ph.D., is an author, professor, and the founder and president of The Biblical Roots Ministries, which seeks to ground believers in Scripture and defend historical Christianity through biblical teaching and apologetics. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife of thirty-four years. You can connect with him on his website and on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Resources:
Torahism: Are Christians Required to Keep the Law of Moses?, R. L. Solberg
The Law, the Christ, the Promise: A Verse-By-Verse Apologetics Bible Study through Galatians, R. L. Solberg
The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament, Chad Bird
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

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It all started with a phone call. Eight years ago, my life was upended when my phone rang, and my sister told me, briefly and brokenly, that Mom wasn’t right. A few days later, I found myself walking through the doors of a mental health facility in South Carolina where I saw my mom in a state I’d never seen before, and I hope to never see again. A steady, faithful, devoted pastor’s wife of three decades, my mom had become undone by a million thoughts she couldn’t unravel and a million more expectations she was trying to live up to. All those burdens she’d held for others for years finally caught up with her, and she broke. And it broke me, too.

I know I’ve told this story before, but I can still put myself right there. I remember calling my wife that same afternoon to bring her up to speed on everything, and all I could bring myself to say was, “It’s bad. It’s really bad.” If this were Inside Out, that day would be a gigantic orb lodged and preserved for safekeeping in the recesses of my mind whenever I feel like having an emotional afternoon. If I think too long and too hard about that moment, I’ll start weeping again. That’s how real it is. But all those days, weeks, and months of uncertainty are where my book came from.

Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment emerged because I was caught in the throes of suffering and questioning and second-hand depression, and I was eager for answers. For explanations. Why was this happening? To be honest, this is all of us when things go awry. When adversity strikes, there has to be a reason for it, or at least someone to blame, right? If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s what we’d like whenever things don’t pan out how we’d expect or worse, when things turn to ash right in front of us. We want a detailed diagram that puts everything into focus so the fog and frustration of suffering dissipates. But that’s rarely what we get.

In fact, what I’ve come to learn is that despite how much we think reasons and explanations and diagrams might help when we go through adverse seasons, the “help” such resources afford is not only thin, but also fleeting. They may assist in “moving on,” but they don’t really help us heal. For that, we need something else. Better than that, Someone else. Comfort and catharsis amid turmoil and affliction come on the heels of hearing the good word that tells us there is One in the fire with us. There is One who has not only felt but also feels, even now, every pang, every grief, every sorrow, every hurt that you suffer. He suffers with you and for you.

Here’s how I put it in the book:

The hope, then, for those in the abyss of despair, disappointment, and depression is not the panacea of explanations or reasons. There’s no matrix which makes it easier for us to cope with life’s disasters. Instead, there’s just a Person.

The radiant hope of the gospel is that God didn’t recuse himself from our messy situations. Nor did he stay at a safe distance and just shout instructions at us to help us get out of it. Instead, remarkably, thankfully, he stepped into our messy, ruined realm and submerged himself in our iniquity, grief, and sorrow. He carried all of that and put it all to rest in a borrowed tomb and left it there when he walked out of it three days after dying. Christ’s own embrace of God-forsakenness puts him in solidarity with all our God-forsaken days. Even there, he is there. Even then, he shows up.

In the end, that’s what Finding God in the Darkness is all about. Even when all other lights go out, there’s still a God to be found in the darkness. Actually, it’s better than that, because even in the darkness, he finds us. That’s the hope that carried me and my mom through those torturous days. And it’s the only hope I have to offer.

If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you at the Montgomery Area Public Library’s Open Air Book Fair this weekend, where I’ll have copies of my book Finding God in the Darkness. Stop by for a signed copy or just to say hello. If you can’t make it, be sure to grab your copy from the 1517 Shop or Amazon.

Grace and peace to you.

Title: The God Who Runs After You
Text: Luke 19:1–10
Originally delivered on 16 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

After less than two months following Israel’s supernatural exodus out of Egypt, they succumbed to a habit worse than incessantly biting your fingernails: grumbling (Exod. 16:1–2; cf. 14:11–12; 15:24). In the King James, we’re told that they’re “murmuring,” which is a onomatopoeic word, that is, it’s spelled sort of how it sounds. As the whole assembly starts to mutter all manner of complaints under their breath, they expose their unbelieving and ungrateful hearts and threaten to undo the whole congregation in the process. With everyone feeling carte blanche to express just how frustrated they are with their present circumstances, a wave of negativity washes over them, prompting them to reminisce on the “good old days” back in Egypt (Exod. 16:3). According to their recollection, they had it so much better back then, or at least they weren’t starving, or on the verge of it.

There’s a lot wrong with what they are vocalizing right now, not the least of which is that they’re lying to themselves about how good they had it back in Egypt. I mean, they were slaves after all. It’s highly unlikely (read: a total fabrication) that they were just sitting by pots of meat and eating loaves of bread till their tummies were full. But that’s what over-realized nostalgia does: it causes you to misremember the past.

1. The Nostalgia Trap

“Nostalgia,” of course, is a wistful longing for the past, a yearning to escape the present and live in some other time or some other moment. And it’s not always a negative thing. It’s good to remember the past, to cherish the memories of yesteryear. It becomes harmful, though, when that’s where you stay, when nostalgia becomes your default setting. This is why the wisest man who ever lived once warned, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ It is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Eccl. 7:10). Always looking over your shoulder and wishing you could go back to those good old days reveals just how dissatisfied you are with where you are. In other words, if we aren’t careful, nostalgia can intertwine with ingratitude and give birth to an even more dangerous attitude: despair.

Nostalgia’s closest running mate is anxiety. So, whether you’re looking ahead and worrying about what may or may not happen, or whether you’re looking back and wishing you could return to those “better days,” either way, it’s symptomatic of a lack of trust in what God is doing right now, right where we are. This seems to be what transpired in the hearts of the Israelites as they traversed the wilderness of Sin (Exod. 16:1–3). Whatever rations they brought with them on their journey just weren’t cutting it. They were overly tired and more than a little “hangry,” which somehow made them long for the conveniences of Egyptian servitude.

And while their trepidation and fear at the Red Sea made sense, what with a bloodthirsty army hot on their heels, Israel’s grumbling isn’t as excusable this time. Their moaning and murmuring didn’t stem from the onset of starvation, but from their dissatisfaction. Their complaints are born out of a forward-looking assumption, lamenting the fact that the food is eventually going to run out. It hasn’t yet, but it will. And then what, Moses? What are you gonna do when we all starve to death? Of course, anyone taking inventory of Israel’s supplies could do the math and come to the same conclusion. Depending on how much food everyone ate and how many babies were being born, then “X” amount of food should last “X” amount of time.

But instead of trusting in the God who never shied away from showcasing his power on their behalf, and who put his fingerprints all over their deliverance — from the ten plagues to the Red Sea crossing — the congregation of Israel focuses on how wretched their circumstances are or will eventually become. A steady diet of just the food they hastily packed up when they left Egypt can’t compare to the meals they used to enjoy, so they claim. Frustrated and dissatisfied, they decided to take a stroll down a lane of false memories (Exod. 16:3). And in their dissatisfaction, they chose to listen to nostalgia more than the words of God, leading to an epidemic of unbelief spreading through the congregation like a contagion.

The obvious danger of over-realized nostalgia is that it puts you on the short road to doubt and disbelief. But rather than becoming irate with them, which is what I would’ve surely done, God patiently says that he’s going to graciously provide for them (Exod. 16:4–5), sending them the “bread of the angels” so that they wouldn’t go hungry (Ps. 78:21–29). He nourished his people by giving them “meat to eat and bread to the full” (Exod. 16:8). Morning and evening, all their needs were met by God’s abundant supply (cf. Phil. 4:19). They weren’t forced to scavenge for food, nor were they just “scraping by.” Yahweh’s provision for his people exceeded what any of them could’ve hoped for (Exod. 16:6–8). That’s just the kind of God he is. “He comes over the mountains of our transgressions,” John Cumming once said, “and shows himself gracious to us in spite of them.”1

2. Grace Like Falling Manna

And all of this despite Israel’s incessant grumbling, which, not for nothing, is mentioned five times in a mere two verses (Exod. 16:7–8). Despite their lack of trust in him, God provided for them anyway, a.k.a. grace (Exod. 16:9–13). He showed them his heart for them, meeting their needs when they least deserved it. And far from being a one-time deal, God’s gracious provision endured for the next forty years (Exod. 16:35). For the next four decades, Israel woke up to fresh manna every morning.

“Manna,” of course, is one of the most fascinating parts of Israel’s storied past (cf. Neh. 9:15; Ps. 105:40; 1 Cor. 10:3). “Manna” isn’t its real name; it’s just what everyone called it (Exod. 16:14–15). No one could make sense of the substance that fell out of the sky every time the sun rose, hence the name, stemming from the Hebrew word for “What?” or “What is it?” But, even still, there it was, every morning: a fresh blanket of manna (Exod. 16:31; Num. 11:7–8).

• Whenever I try to picture manna, my mind imagines falling snow.

• I’m especially struck by the fact that there’s no sound when snow hits the ground.

• Instead, there’s just a profound quiet.

• Even as the ground is bedecked in white powder.

This is sort of what God’s grace is like. His grace is rarely seen in boisterous or bombastic displays of might, showiness, or force. Instead, grace often shows up as a steady, quiet gift. Even if you can’t hear it, even if you’re unaware of it, it’s there for you every day, like fresh morning mercies (Lam. 3:22–23).

3. The Test of the Manna

Just as at Marah, where the Lord “tested” the faith of his people (Exod. 15:25), so, too, is the manna a heavenly “test” (Exod. 16:4). As Moses proceeds to explain (Exod. 16:16–19, 22–26), God’s people were supposed to gather approximately two liters of manna for every person per household. No one needed to be stingy since there was plenty to go around, but neither were they to hoard or stockpile it. The daily gatherings were just for those day’s needs, except on day six, when they were commanded to collect “twice as much bread” (Exod. 16:22) in light of the Sabbath the following day (Exod. 16:23, 26).2 The “test” is rather straightforward: day by day, gather what you need, and on day six, gather twice that.

It would seem, though, that the Israelites possess the listening capabilities of a toddler who’s told no, or of a churchgoer during the announcements, since they promptly ignore Moses’s instructions, despite how clearly he explained them (Exod. 16:20–21). Some still collected more manna than what they needed. So, when the sun rose the next day, their leftovers became worm-infested and stinky. Naturally, Moses got very upset, but Israel wasn’t done not listening. After being told, “Don’t go looking for manna on day seven, because there won’t be any to gather,” some still went out to gather (Exod. 16:27). Their inability to listen and obey is almost comical, prompting God’s disappointed reply:

And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day. (Exod. 16:28–30)

You almost get the sense that God is explaining it to Moses so he can then explain it to the people in the most basic of terms, as if he’s talking to a bunch of toddlers. What was at stake, though, was neither unimportant nor trivial. Their refusal to listen and obey was indicative of much deeper issues, revealing just how little they actually trusted in God and his word. Instead of being satisfied with God’s words and trusting him for tomorrow’s bread, Israel’s dissatisfaction led to a preoccupation with “getting.” And as they gathered more than what they needed, or went out to gather when they should’ve rested, they effectively told the Lord they didn’t trust him. By their actions, they evidenced their unbelief and dissatisfaction with the words and promises of God.

4. Satisfied in the Word

But that’s the whole point. The daily regimen of manna was meant to instill in them deep trust and profound satisfaction in God’s words alone. It was an object lesson for the truer lesson “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). The miracle of the manna, therefore, isn’t really about bread at all. It’s about faith. It’s about trust. It’s about whether or not the redeemed people of God, that is, his church, will live like a people who are supremely satisfied with God and his word.

Israel wasn’t totally satisfied, so they looked back on the “better days” back in Egypt and wished they could go back there. But before we ridicule them, we ought to admit that we do the same thing, all the time. When Israel craves Egypt’s meat pots, it’s sort of like when church leaders or churchgoers yearn for the days when “everyone went to church,” or when the country felt more “Christian,” or when the days felt “simpler.” And underneath our nostalgia-filled “it was so much better when . . .” is thinly veiled anxiety. Indeed, a close companion to all our worries about the future is a constant longing to return to those “better” days. It’s a continuation of Israel’s crisis, fearing what might happen and trying to make things better by nostalgizing how it used to be.

The problem with that is that there has never been an era free from difficulty. There’s never been a generation without a crisis, and perhaps that has never been more apparent than right now. Our world seems to stand on the edge of a knife. Like a row of dominoes set to tumble, we are dismayed by what may or may not happen with Israel, Iran, and Washington. What if? What then? We are so distraught over what might be that we tend to romanticize what once was. But whether you’re looking ahead or looking back, both are symptoms of a lack of trust — both signal that we’re not totally confident in what God is doing right now.

5. Waiting for a Time That Never Arrives

In some ways, this puts us in the same position as the prophet Habakkuk, who was told by God, “I am doing a work in your days that you wouldn’t believe if told” (Hab. 1:5). I wonder if we still believe that’s true, that God’s at work in our midst. It can be hard to believe sometimes, but that’s how it has always been. Faith is always hard.

• Whether it’s the Civil War of the 1860s,

• or the Panic of 1873,

• or the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century,

• or WWI,

• or the Great Depression,

• or WWII,

• or the Cold War,

• or the Vietnam War,

• or Watergate,

• or the First Gulf War,

• or 9/11,

• or the Second Gulf War,

• or the 2008 housing crisis,

• or COVID,

• or the Epstein Files,

• or the impending AI apocalypse . . .

There has never been an opportune moment ot put all your trust, faith, and hope in God. And if you’re waiting for that day to come, or if you’re wishing for those better days to return, you’re waiting and wishing for a time that doesn’t exist. The only way to get by or get through these times is to trust in the Lord to the point where you are fully satisfied in him and with him, no matter what. The answer to our ceaseless worrying about tomorrow is not wistfully wishing to return to a different era. Rather, the solution is God’s words, God’s kingdom, and God himself (Matt. 6:25–34). All of which, of course, is what God’s Son came to give us.

6. Daily Bread for Anxious Hearts

Christ himself is the true and better “bread from heaven,” the manna that fully satisfies (John 6:32–35). He alone is the “bread of life,” the church’s true sustenance and abiding meal. And just as the congregation of Israel was called to partake of the manna daily, so, too, is the church beckoned to partake of Jesus’s person and work in the gospel (John 6:51, 57–58). Thus, when it’s said that we need to hear the gospel every day, it’s not only because we forget it every day, although that’s true; it’s because the gospel is our daily bread, the steady and quiet gift of grace that our anxious and forgetful, and nostalgia-prone hearts so desperately need. Jesus’s body and blood are the true manna that feeds our souls in times of crisis or doubt. The word that sustains us is the word of the cross.

“As the manna was food for the body,” Michael P. V. Barrett concludes, “Christ is food for the soul. As the manna provided daily nourishment, so must Christ.”3 Accordingly, when nostalgia whispers in your ear or when anxiety paralyzes your heart, or when tomorrow feels unsteady, the gospel reassures us that there is fresh mercy on the ground and grace to be had in droves. It tells us all about a Savior who invites each of us to trust him and be satisfied with him, and to “come to him, all who are weary and heavy laden, and he will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Much like the good news Israel received, the good news for the church is that we don’t live by bread alone, but by the Savior who has already given himself for us, and whose grace is more than sufficient for all your present sorrow and whatever else tomorrow holds.

Only the late Robert Capon could grasp the heights of grace and the depths of flavor in a strawberry compote. His love of theology and cooking is likely an unparalleled tandem. And while some find his writing too provocative and personal convictions too liberal, I find him to strike the right notes that get comfortable pew-sitters to sit up and take notice of what this thing is really about. The “thing” being “the church and the Christian life.” What’s it about? What’s the point? While I don’t always follow Capon everywhere he goes, on the matter of who the church is for, he’s spot on.

Confessionally-minded folk will likely say that “the thing” is all about glorifying God and enjoying him forever,1 or something along those lines, which, of course, is undoubtedly true. But within that glorification and enjoyment, there is a vital truth that the church often forgets — namely, that this whole thing is about sinners being brought to Christ. Apropos to Capon and cooking, in a collection of his essays entitled More Theology & Less Heavy Cream: The Domestic Life of Pietro and Madeleine, in which he and his wife’s alter-egos enjoy a playful back-and-forth over cuisine, culture, marriage, and grace, Capon puts “the thing” in stark relief, writing, “A church that can’t manage to stay in communion with sinners makes about as much sense as a carpenter who can’t stand to handle wood.”2

Sinners are the church’s business (Mark 2:17; Luke 19:10). And while some might take that as a thesis for seeker-sensitive churches, that’s not exactly what I’m saying. Seeker-sensitive churches or, to use Jared C. Wilson’s terminology, “attractional”3 churches are often guilty of tweaking the message or the approach to the message of grace so that it comes across as more palatable to the less churchy crowd. Forgive my inner curmudgeon, but when the prelude to your Sunday morning service is little more than a Beyoncé cover, and your sermon is one in a series of Netflix tie-ins, what’s at stake is that you’ve subtly determined that “grace upon grace” can’t hold a room on its own. It needs an opening act.

But to say that “sinners are the church’s business” doesn’t mean adjusting the message. That’s sort of the point Capon makes throughout his writings, what with his customary emphasis on the grace that emanates from Jesus’s words and actions. From his parables to his person, grace is not merely what Jesus does; it’s who he is.

And the point is that Christ’s church, those who are meant to represent God’s Son and reflect his grace and truth, is never more herself than when she sits shoulder to shoulder with sinners. “The church,” Capon continues, “has to be told loud and clear that tossing out sinners is a violation of the Gospel of grace.”4 Instead of a museum of the pious, the church is a triage center for the walking wounded. And Capon wasn’t the first to make this assessment. One of my favorite orators, the Scottish Baptist Alexander Maclaren, who ministered more than a century before, preempts Capon with these striking lines:

A Christian church which does not imitate its Master in its frank and continual willingness to associate itself with the degraded and the outcast has lost one of the truest signs of its being vitalised with the life of Christ. There is much in this day in the condition of Christian communities to make men dissatisfied and fearful. But there is one thing which, though in all its developments one cannot sympathise with it, is in its essence wholly good, and that is the new and quickened consciousness that a church which does not address itself to the outcasts has no business to live; and that Christian people who are too proud of their righteousness to go amongst the unclean and the degraded are a great deal more of Pharisees than Christians, and have need to learn which be the first principles of the religion which they profess. Self-righteousness gathers up its skirts in holy horror; perfect righteousness goes cheerily and without fear amongst the outcasts, for where should the physician go but to the sick, and where should Christ be found but in the house of the publican?5

Maclaren’s diagnosis of the “holy horror” of the self-righteous and their spiritual skirts piercingly describes the church that’s too in love with its scruples to extend an invite to sinners to come inside. Lost in that holy shuffle is the fact that all of us, every last stinking one of us, were on the outside looking in. In other words, as soon as you start categorizing folks into clean and unclean, you turn a blind eye toward what’s true of everyone — namely, that grace is our lifeline.

Grace isn’t an announcement merely for the unchurched or the unregenerate. Grace is for sinners, and, as has often been pointed out, sinners are all that there are. This, to be sure, isn’t an abstract thing, nor is it just a warm sentiment the church keeps on tap like it does coffee in the foyer. Grace is a person with scars all over his body, which point toward his sacrificial self-surrender outside the camp so that sinners could be brought in (Heb. 13:12).

As such, for a church not to have room for sinners in its ranks is a sure sign that the church has lost the plot — the plot being grace for you, grace for all, grace upon grace. Despite how that may sound, this isn’t an overstatement. Grace, after all, is the one thing you can never exaggerate. As soon as you think you’ve pushed it too far, you’ve barely scratched the surface of how deep it goes.

Grace and peace to you.

Title: Everything We Have Is From Him
Text: Exodus 35:1—39:43
Originally delivered on 9 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

A few weeks ago, I shared some of my initial thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic venture, The Odyssey, which is an adaptation of Homer’s classic poem of ancient Greek myth of the same name. Having watched Nolan’s film for a second time between now and then (in IMAX, no less!), I can vouch for the fact that The Odyssey is not only a masterful piece of filmmaking, but also cements Nolan’s status as one of the great filmmakers in history, let alone this century. As a craft, movie-making is an art form, which means the standards by which it is judged are mostly subjective. Not everyone is going to like or enjoy the same movies. That’s sort of the point.

For example, I know some folks who thoroughly enjoy Wes Anderson’s filmography, with such entries as The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, among others. I have no qualms in saying that I do not enjoy Anderson’s films at all. My wife and I attempted to watch Moonrise Kingdom back in the day, but the Wes Anderson schtick just never stuck with me. I’ve never seen another movie he’s made. And I think that’s okay. In fact, I know that’s okay. That’s art. Different artists create different things that speak differently or mean different things to different people. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed after twenty-odd years of arguing about movies with my friends (you know who you are), it’s that the majority of those “fights” aren’t really about production value, dialogue, or action sequences, but about what we think movies owe us.

1. I’m a Nolan Guy

For one reason or another, I’ve always had an affection for Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre. I was blown away when I saw Batman Begins in 2005, and the gritty way he reimagined that character. It is, to this day, one of the better origin stories you’ll see. His sequel, The Dark Knight, only solidified my fandom even further, especially the serious way in which he treated a comic book character’s plot and plight. There were real stakes and a real love of the craft of filmmaking evident in the way Nolan told those stories. He wasn’t just out to make a buck or make something cool. He was out to make something meaningful. That took you somewhere, told you something, and made you feel something. And maybe even changed your mind.

It was 2010, though, when I became a through-and-through “Chris Nolan fanboy,” unashamedly so, with the release of his long-gestating original film, Inception. I’ve told this story previously, but one of the reasons that film made such an impact on me is not only because of its spectacular thrills, but also because it marked my first foray into theater-going. I have a real sense of nostalgia for Dom Cobb and his dream-within-a-dream capers. My wife and I sat down to watch it again for, I don’t know, something like the thirtieth time recently, and it’s just as resonant now as it was then. I’ve often said that the blessing and curse of Inception as my first movie in such a venue is that every subsequent film I see in theaters is judged by that experience. And nothing has quite lived up to it, not even in 2026.

But this is an already-too-long preface to what I really want to talk about, which is The Odyssey, an epic film that will more than likely win a slew of awards and earn Nolan his second Best Picture Oscar, and will also mostly be remembered for the ways its premiere was mired in controversy and boycotts. At least, that’s what certain pockets of the Internet are going to choose to remember.

2. The Storm Before the Storm

Since the very first still of Matt Damon’s Odysseus was released, a bevy of online commenters were lamenting the lack of historical accuracy and general “uninspired” look that seemed to be present in Nolan’s follow-up to his award-winning masterpiece, Oppenheimer. Folks were quick and eager to judge The Odyssey based on a single image extracted from its context. However, this was nothing but the calm before Poseidon’s storm, the breeze that precedes the Zeus-sized thunderhead of vitriol that was to come as more and more details emerged about Nolan’s adaptation of this beloved piece of literature.

From Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy to Damon’s aforementioned portrayal of Homer’s mythic hero to Zendaya’s Athena to Tom Holland’s Telemachus to Elliot Page being cast at all, each new production update on The Odyssey was met with resistance and takes and irate commenters telling everyone else how horrible Nolan’s movie was going to be. I won’t lie, even I was caught up in the hysteria, especially after some of the initial trailers were released for mass consumption. What should’ve been a triumphant moment as one of the most epic stories in human history was finally getting an equally epic treatment on the big screen turned out to be a moment when social media managers are glad that the YouTube dislike counter defaults to “off.”

The Odyssey’s teaser trailers and previews were criminally ratioed, with everyone citing the same things: terrible casting, horrible production design, and a general air of “woke” encroachment. Admittedly, every trailer I saw for The Odyssey seemed to be missing a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain something. Every preview felt flat and uninteresting, even for a Nolan diehard like me. After two viewings of the actual film, though, I can definitively say that the trailers don’t do it justice. Not at all. I’ll do my best to refrain from going on a long rabbit trail about movie trailers and how many bad ones there are in the marketplace. Needless to say, the marketers didn’t really do any Nolan any favors, as they succumbed to the all-too-typical pitfall of showing too much.

Homer’s Odyssey isn’t necessarily a story that needs introduction. Nor do general audiences need to be sold on buying tickets to see Christopher Nolan’s latest big-screen adventure. I’m no marketer or public relations person, but the combined cachet of source material and man behind the camera should’ve resulted in far more ambiguous and mysterious previews leading up to the film’s release. Instead, we were given a slew of out-of-context images that only fueled the fires of opposition and assumption. What’s hilariously ironic to me is seeing all the critics who thought Elliot Page had been cast as Achilles and couldn’t believe how “woke” Nolan had become have to eat crow after that assumption turned out to be flatly untrue.

3. All Takes, No Consensus

But before I get too far over my skis, if I’m not already, I have to admit that I’ve never familiarized myself with Homer’s original epic (sue me!). No, I’ve never sat down to read a 600-page classical Greek poem. What can I say, I was homeschooled. But anyways, I’m not here to necessarily litigate a film’s fidelity to a literary text. The Odyssey, despite how it might seem or sound in certain corners of the Internet, isn’t the first film to adapt a piece of literature and make changes to the source material. Case in point, one of the most beloved trilogies of all time, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, made way more changes to J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved Middle-earth tales, and yet is still regarded as the consummate example of how film adaptations succeed. In other words, the fallout from The Odyssey might reveal more about us — and our moment — than anything else.

I’ve read more than a dozen takes on how to think about this version of Homer’s epic poem, all of which fall on some sort of spectrum of appreciation or loathing. In an article for First Things, Anatoly Grablevsky called it “rudderless.” Jake Adkins, over at Mere Orthodoxy, understood it as a “reintroduction” to an “enchanted cosmos.” Stephanie Zacharek, for Time, called The Odyssey an “eye-glazing dud of a movie.” Richard Brody, writing for The New Yorker, said that Nolan’s film “turns an epic poem prosaic.” Chris Evangelista, who reviewed the film for SlashFilm, called it a “grandiose” achievement that was, at times, both “exhilarating and exhausting.” And despite hailing it as “three hours of cinematic excellence,” Dr. Nijay Gupta ultimately considered The Odyssey to have failed in its effort to adapt the essence of Homer’s original epic.

There was no shortage of theologized or politicized takes as well. In Esau McCaulley’s reflection on The Odyssey for Holy Post Media, he reckons with the film’s connective tissue to our own modern political climate. Brett McCracken’s article for The Gospel Coalition laments the “apparent magic” of Nolan’s ancient Grecian world, where the gods are a “quieter, mostly unseen presence.” Paul Marchbanks, for Christianity Today, understands the film as a poignant reminder “of what we lose when we abandon kindness.” Griffin Gooch traces a similar thread. Owen Strachan wrestles with the flawed yet faithful themes present in Nolan’s work. And, for what it’s worth, Micah Mattix compiled a few other opinions over on his Prufrock newsletter, too.

4. That’s Not My Odysseus

The point, I hope, is well taken: by and large, we don’t know what to do or what to think about The Odyssey, at least this version of it. Some insist it’s the definitive retelling of Homer’s epic, while others have dubbed it a piece of “woke” trash. This was most glaringly evident in the varied opinions of DailyWire co-workers Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, both of whom were very outspoken about their respective perspectives on Nolan’s latest venture. While the former largely gave it praise, despite some inherent flaws, the latter decried the movie since it “transports [the viewer] into the mind of a liberal woman in 2017.” At least as he understood it.

Walsh, of course, is referring to the 2017 translation of Homer’s poem by Emily Wilson, who, despite preserving some of the original features of the Greek epic, also decided to incorporate modern syntax and vocabulary. Critics of Wilson’s project were quick to notice other characteristics as well, many of which were deemed anachronistic or even heterodox,1 leading her translation to be dubbed the “Feminist Version” of Homer’s work. Whether or not that’s entirely true, I can’t say since I haven’t read it myself.

But if you take the time to read all those hot takes in conjunction, what you begin to notice is that rarely are the critiques about style or technique. No one’s impugning Christopher Nolan’s ability to block a shot — with a 70mm IMAX camera no less — or his obsessive need to capture everything the old-fashioned way. As an auteur, he’s already solidified his reputation in the form, and The Odyssey is a prime example of that fact. Everything from the cinematography to the editing to the sound design to Ludwig Göransson’s score is a masterclass in filmmaking. It’s been a long time, perhaps since Master and Commander, that we’ve seen such exceptional seafaring escapades captured on film. But what’s driving most of the chatter surrounding The Odyssey is the sentiment, “That’s not my Odysseus.”

5. Heroes Who Fail

Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus is a complicated hero, which, for whatever it’s worth, is mostly true of Homer’s version. There is no pristine heroism in Homer, even if we’ve come to believe there was. The Odysseus of ancient myth portrays a war hero who’ll just as easily lie to get out of a jam as he is to put an arrow through your heart. As much as we might laud his heroics, Odysseus is still a man who is impulsive, manipulative, boastful, and spends years in the beds of goddesses while his faithful wife hopes beyond hope that, somehow, someday, he returns. In other words, the purity of “That’s not my Odysseus” largely emerges from an archetypal hero that never existed in the source material in the first place.

There are shades of, dare I say it, Luke Skywalker circa The Last Jedi in Nolan’s Odysseus, which, I know, ostracizes and pushes some folks away. I begrudgingly make that connection due to the negative juju that often nips the heels of even mentioning that movie, but I can’t help it. What Rian Johnson did with everyone’s favorite laser-sword-wielding hero is sacrilege for some, okay, a lot of you. But, in a vacuum, all things considered, I’m way more in favor of seeing a jaded Jedi come to grips with his failures after he’s been through some stuff and what that means for him, his identity, and for those who depend on him. Folks didn’t want to see that, though. They wanted a Luke who was steely-eyed and emotionless, who kicks a ton of Stormtroopers’ butts without even breaking a sweat. But that’s not what we got.

Sure, I can’t defend Luke sloppily slurping milk he just extracted from an alien creature’s udder. But I can and will defend the trajectory of his character. And before you say, “That’s not my Luke Skywalker,” I don’t really care all that much. What draws me so much to Luke in The Last Jedi is precisely his flaws and the ways he overcomes them. As everyone’s favorite pointy-eared Jedi tells him, poignantly, “Pass on what you have learned. Strength. Mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is.” I’m drawn to that because that’s real. That’s life. That’s me.

6. Paragons and Mirrors

While flawless heroes can be admired, they can’t necessarily be trusted. We can only look up to them, applaud their feats, and aspire to emulate their heroics, all the while knowing that those exploits are beyond us. They’re not true to life. They don’t meet us where we are. And I get it, some just want to go see a movie that provides an escape from all that, from where they are. But films that stand the test of time — and the jury’s still out if this’ll be true of The Odyssey — are those that say something, mean something, and make you feel something. And many of the best have qualities that you can recognize — failure most of all — which is what closes the distance between archetype and equal.

The question The Odyssey, The Last Jedi, and other films like them raise is this: Why do we crave unflawed heroes so badly? Perhaps it’s because heroes who fail, who have flaws, aren’t so much paragons as they are mirrors. And we can’t stand to see what we see in that reflection. If you’ll forgive the theologizing for a second, the longing for a pure hero makes a lot more sense when the narrative of the Bible is kept in view, and we come to grips with the fact that our craving for an impeccable hero is but a memory of Eden’s fiasco, when what was “very good” was shattered by the intrusion of sin and death. And ever since, we’ve been trying to pick up the pieces, or looking for someone who can.

Odysseus’s journey, as Nolan portrays it, of victory, regret, grief, revenge, and catharsis is made of similar material. From lauded king and celebrated warrior to troubled man, coping with the can of immoral worms he’s unleashed on the world, the aggrieved Odysseus is not only relatable but tangible. This, by the way, is why cinematic adaptations of Superman always fall short. When, ironically enough, Christopher Nolan’s name got attached to executive produce a new Superman movie, folks were buzzing about the potential of getting a gritty, down-to-earth realization of the comic book industry’s most iconic character. Whether or not Zack Snyder succeeded in that with Man of Steel is up for debate.

And although I lean more in Man of Steel’s favor than most, the issue with cinematic depictions of Superman has little to do with tone or his overpowered superpowers. Part of the reason Superman movies never appeal to me is that he’s rarely guilty or put in a position of risk. Whether it’s meteors, villains, or paralytic rocks, most, if not all, of his conflicts remain external. He himself is rarely at fault. There’s plenty of wreckage in his wake — just ask Metropolis — but almost none of it is his doing. All he has to do is swoop in and save the day, again. (This, by the way, is exactly what Man of Steel attempted to correct, to mixed results.) Perhaps what makes the Superman mythos such an impossible nut to crack is that it portrays a god pretending to be a man. And as much as he might get good at pretending, there will always be a distance between him and us.

7. Ruined Men and Zeus’s Law

Heroes who are flawed are compelling precisely because they tell the truth about us, about who we are and where we are. That’s not “woke” revisionism. That’s inspired Scripture. From Genesis to now, we’ve been grappling with the flaws of even the most faithful among us. Abraham lied to kings to save his own skin. Moses became a fugitive of the state after committing cold-blooded murder. David sent a man to his death so he could keep the man’s wife for himself. Peter swore like a sailor that he’d never even met the Rabbi who had an appointment with the gallows. In other words, the Bible itself is full of ruined men who’ve unleashed some of that ruin on the world around them. The reason being so that we’d never mistake them for the hero we really need.

The Odyssey’s not-so-subtle thread that keeps getting tugged is the invocation of “Zeus’s law,” which is shorthand for the Greek code of xenia and the sacred obligation among strangers to be hospitable and generous to one another. If you haven’t seen the film, you might be surprised by the “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” motif that pervades the three-hour runtime. At one point, one of the characters suggests the necessity and urgency for xenia arises out of the fact that strangers who knock on your door might just be gods in disguise. Let me just say that I didn’t have “Christopher Nolan invokes Hebrews 13:2” on my 2026 Bingo card. Nolan’s film, as well as Homer’s poem, ultimately hinge on the thin moral line between barbarism and being human.

“Don’t look for gods in men,” Damon’s Odysseus quips, “you’ll just be disappointed.” As cynical as this sentiment might seem, there’s some truth to it, especially if you recall Paul and Barnabas’s experience in Lystra, where, after healing a man, they’re mistaken for incarnations of Zeus and Hermes (cf. Acts 14:8–18). Lystra’s citizens, it would seem, were very familiar with “Zeus’s law” and the disaster that might ensue if they ignored it. But even as priests and patrons bedecked Jesus’s missionaries with garlands and showered them with praise, Paul foils their celebration by divulging that he and Barnabas are just men. “We also are men, of like nature with you,” he retorts (Acts 14:15). “Don’t look for gods in us,” in other words, “but let me tell you about the Living God.”

Paul’s immediate instinct is to exploit the fracas of “apparent magic” and myth-become-fact by directing their attention to the good news of the Truth Myth, of the King who doesn’t merely disguise himself as a man, but becomes one like us. Every hero we’ve ever loved is but an echo, a rumor, of the true and better Hero, whose grace exceeds our failure, whose love binds him to wood, not to survive the siren’s call, but to silence sin and sedition for good.2 This, C. S. Lewis once wrote, is “the heart of Christianity” itself — namely, “myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.”3

Where Odysseus returned home laden with his own guilt, Christ comes to carry yours for you, to put it away in the grave where his sacrifice makes all things new. The world of fire and ash that Nolan’s mythic hero regrets unleashing isn’t ultimately doomed because there is a Hero who descends from heaven to atone, not for his own misdeeds, but for yours and mine. So instead of looking for gods in men, the good news tells us to look to the Man who is God, who washes the blood off your guilt-ridden hands by shedding his own.

Mentioning the word “Israel” nowadays is a surefire way to stir political, theological, or eschatological pots. But Scripture gives us the grammar to make sense of it all through the lenses of fulfillment and expansion. Listen along as Chad Bird and I trace the story God’s telling of the people he’s forming and calling to himself, from Adam to Moses to today, and how every promise God has made is Yes and Amen in Jesus.

Chad and his wife Stacy live in Tyler, Texas, where he works as a Scholar-in-Residence for 1517. Along with writing, speaking, and teaching, you can also listen to him on the “40 Minutes in the Old Testament” podcast, which he co-hosts with Dan Price. Be sure to connect with him on Instagram and Facebook.

Resources:
Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament, Chad Bird
The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament, Chad Bird
Limping with God: Jacob & the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, Chad Bird
From Adam and Israel to the Church: A Biblical Theology of the People of God, Benjamin L. Gladd
A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, G. K. Beale
Revelation: A Shorter Commentary, G. K. Beale
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

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Credits:
Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
Composer: DJ Quads, soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
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Title: How God Changes People Who Can’t Change Themselves
Text: Exodus 34:27–35
Originally delivered on 2 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
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One of the most compelling books in the Old Testament canon is that of Ruth, which follows its namesake’s journey from Moabite widow to covenantal member in the family of promise. Despite the myriad theological significances of this four-part narrative, the book proceeds scarcely mentioning the Lord at all, as the unknown author opts to unfurl the heart of Yahweh by setting it against the backdrop of what my pastor and mentor from Florida used to refer to as the greatest love story ever told. Most scholars agree, citing Ruth as a premier specimen of ancient writ. “As a piece of literature,” says Daniel I. Block, “the book of Ruth is one of the most delightful ever produced.”1 Nathan Tiessen agrees, writing, “The book of Ruth is one of the most well-crafted pieces of literature in the Old Testament.”2 Even so, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill biblical rom-com. There’s much more going on under the surface than one might suppose.

1. The Silent Providence of Ruth

As noted, apart from passing mentions in Chapters 1 and 4, the narrator of Ruth avoids attributing anything that transpires to the direct involvement of God (cf. Ruth 1:6; 4:13). God’s apparent hiddenness does not, however, correspond to a narrative that is any less divine than, say, the narratives of Elijah and Elisha, where Yahweh’s supernatural activity is made manifest. What it does suggest, though, is the godlessness of the times. It’s no accident, of course, that Ruth follows the record of Judges in the canon, as the concluding verse of the latter serves to illustrate the brutal world in which the former story takes place (Judg. 21:25). Thus, as a book of grim ordinariness, Ruth offers a glimpse of everyday life, with all of its ups and downs and uncertain outcomes. It “raises the question of whether or not Yahweh can be trusted,” suggests Tiessen,3 with only subtle clues in the text itself affirming that he can. Accordingly, the ordinary story of Ruth conveys a testimony of extraordinary meaning, kindness, and hope, one that leaves little doubt as to whose hand is behind it all.4

The opening five verses of Chapter 1 function almost as a prologue to the main action of the book, setting the scene and the stakes for the rest of the narrative (Ruth 1:1–5). A devastating famine mobilizes a Hebrew couple, Naomi and Elimelech, to find a new home among the Gentiles of Moab. The devastation follows Naomi even there, though, as she is forced to watch as her husband and both of her sons pass away, leaving her and her two Moabite daughters-in-law in one of the most hopeless situations in the ancient Near East. With no heir to carry on the family name, nor any male head of the household to offer provision for them, we are privy to a scene of searing desperation. This prompts Naomi to return home (to Bethlehem!), with Ruth pledging to go along with her, ignoring Naomi’s suggestion to go back home (Ruth 1:8–9). Instead, as Ruth appeals, wherever Naomi goes, she will go. “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God,” the Moabitess confesses (Ruth 1:16). After a string of inestimable loss, leave it to God to surprise one of his own with a demonstration of faithful love and gracious commitment from one outside the covenant community.

2. The First Glimpses of Grace

Circumstances are much different upon Naomi’s return home. As Tiessen well notes, after originally leaving “Bethlehem, ‘the House of Bread,’ ‘full’ of family and ‘empty’ of food, [she] now returns ‘empty’ of family, and finds Bethlehem ‘full’ of food.”5 This, it should be noted, is indicative of the “divine happenstance” already at work in the lives of both Naomi and Ruth. The former’s experience of searing loss leads her to bemoan her life, understandably so (Ruth 1:20–21). And yet, the very one whom she saw as the instigator of her calamity was, in fact, the one who was, even then, orchestrating her recovery (Ruth 1:22). Naomi and Ruth’s return to the House of Bread “at the beginning of barley harvest” is only the first of many divine surprises, or what we might call incursions of grace, within the narrative. This trend reaches its high point when Ruth goes out to glean in the part of the field that “happened” to belong to Boaz, who, it just so happens, is a relative of Naomi’s late husband (Ruth 2:1–3). Of course, despite his apparent hiddenness and the author’s emphasis on the unforeseen convergence of sufferers like Naomi and Ruth and a nobleman like Boaz, God’s fingerprints are all over these events.

After scooping up whatever Boaz’s reapers had left behind, he takes notice of Ruth, learns of her story, and proceeds to demonstrate an immeasurable dose of kindness and favor toward her (Ruth 2:4–13). Boaz’s eyes are full of grace as he takes Ruth into his care, protecting and feeding her at his very own table “until she was satisfied” (Ruth 2:14), even going so far as to arrange additional bundles of grain for her to gather (Ruth 2:15–16). Notably, he undertakes each of these actions prior to any knowledge of familial connection or obligation. It is goodness and grace being dispensed in surprising ways on unlikely individuals. After learning of the day’s events, Naomi is overcome with joy (Ruth 2:19–22), since not only was Boaz a relative, but he was also a kinsman-redeemer. “The man is a close relative of ours,” Naomi gleefully says, “one of our redeemers (גָּאַל)” (Ruth 2:20). This, to be sure, is an allusion to the right of the kinsman-redeemer, which details how a next of kin could lawfully come to the aid of his needy relatives, relieving them from their barrenness and brokenness. The fundamental objective, Robert L. Hubbard explains, was “to repair family wholeness broken by the trouble [and] continue a childless family line on its land through the marriage of its widow to a relative.”6

3. Ruth’s Portrait of Redemption

It goes without saying that the note of redemption and specifically the activity of the kinsman-redeemer is a prevailing theme of the Book of Ruth. Hubbard even suggests that it is its “central motif.”7 Despite the scant appearances of this familial right in the biblical canon, that shouldn’t lead one to diminish its gravity on the rest of Scripture. From the prophetic real estate deal in Jeremiah 32:1–15, to the legal explanations of Numbers 35:9–34 and Deuteronomy 25:5–10, to Job’s anguished invocation (Job 19:23–25), the function of the kinsman-redeemer, whenever it surfaces, gestures to the prerogative of the ultimate Redeemer, the divine Author at work within and behind every moment. Accordingly, Ruth’s narrative serves as an extended drama throughout which the notes of redemption are highlighted. “The author of Ruth,” Brad Embry says, “has constructed a story in which two of the primary characters, while functioning within an unfolding story of loss and restoration for a particular household, can also be emblematic of Yahweh’s actions on behalf of Israel.”8 This, of course, becomes more apparent as the drama unfolds.

Knowing full well that she was beyond her childbearing years (Ruth 1:11–12), Naomi encourages Ruth to make herself known to Boaz, the one who could redeem them from their current situation (Ruth 3:1–5). As foreign as these instructions might sound to our modern ears, what with Ruth being told to situate herself at her possible suitor’s feet and to uncover them at some point during the night, they amount to a hopeful bride courting — somewhat aggressively, sure — a potential bridegroom. Some interpreters, ones perhaps too inoculated with the modern milieu, find a bevy of sexual overtones in what transpires here. However, this nighttime encounter is anything but an attempt at seduction or some risqué rendezvous. Even with some allowances on how to translate Boaz’s “feet,” any apparent or supposed impropriety is easily dismissed once you remember this meeting took place on the threshing floor, that is, a worksite that was open to the public. Rather than some sultry advance, Ruth approaches Boaz in a communal setting to have a personal conversation.9 Despite the oddities, Ruth’s actions are wholly pragmatic: uncovered feet are cold feet, leading to restlessness and, eventually, wakefulness. “When he wakes up,” we might understand Naomi’s words, “he’ll have to notice you.”

Ruth does as her mother-in-law suggests, and things unfold just as she predicted. Boaz is roused from his slumber and is startled to find a visitor staring at him at the foot of his makeshift bed of grain (Ruth 3:6–8). Although he couldn’t perceive who it was, Ruth cleared that up lickety-split. “I am Ruth, your servant,” she whispered. “Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer” (Ruth 3:9). Again, the implication of this request isn’t a sexual dalliance but covenantal marriage (cf. Ezek. 16:8). Though somewhat foreign to our Western sensitivities, the gist of her appeal is a matrimonial proposal, one that was rooted in the legal and covenantal by-laws of Boaz’s heritage. Ever the consummate gentleman, Boaz responds with dignity and grace, preserving Ruth’s reputation since he knows she is “a worthy woman” (Ruth 3:11; cf. Prov. 31:10ff). Accordingly, although it would be foolish to suggest that romance wasn’t involved at all, since that seems to be an undertone of Boaz and Ruth’s relationship up to this point, this was no lust-fueled tryst. Even at that dim hour, God’s faithful providence was beginning to take shape.

4. The Other Redeemer

The only hiccup in this arrangement is, as Boaz notes, “There is a redeemer nearer than I” (Ruth 3:12). Another kinsman had the ability and the right to fulfill the need for redemption for Naomi and Ruth, and he had to be consulted first. Determined to resolve this matter speedily, Boaz finds a spot at Bethlehem’s marketplace and waits for the arrival of this “other redeemer,” who, interestingly enough, is never named (Ruth 4:1, 3, 6, 8). This, as I see it, is the author’s subtle allusion to the fact that this other kinsman is an absent and inactive redeemer. Instead of alleviating his destitute kin, he has left them in the lurch to manage by themselves. Of course, as it happens, this other redeemer had business in Bethlehem that day, but little did he know the deal that was waiting for him. Boaz spies him out and convenes a formal meeting with him alongside the elders of the city, where he proceeds to detail what was his right to redeem as a relative of Elimelech (Ruth 4:2–4). What Boaz failed to mention, though, was that this real estate deal came with a marriage proposal (Ruth 4:5–6). This prompts the other redeemer to bow out, giving up his right as the kinsman-redeemer and letting it fall to Boaz, who wastes no time putting everything in order, publicly and legally (Ruth 4:7–10).

Soon after, Boaz and Ruth are married, and they start a family (Ruth 4:13–17). The narrative, which began with such excruciating pain, has found its resolution in a redeemer, who gives himself to the widowed and begets a progeny with her. Even though the structure of this narrative might feel rather banal, it is one that subsists on the scaffolding of God’s sovereign grace, in which there is no such thing as happenstance. “The story of the book of Ruth,” J. Andrew Dearman writes, “is one of God’s provision in the aftermath of deep loss.”10 Famine has yielded to harvest; exile to homecoming; widowhood to matrimony.11 This accords with the biblical pattern showing God’s prerogative to graciously provide for those who are poor, needy, and suffering. “The circumstances of David’s great-grandparents, whose story is being told precisely because they are his family,” Dearman goes on to say, “also reflect YHWH’s preserving power.”12 But there’s more to it than that.

5. The Gospel According to Ruth

The Book of Ruth isn’t excluded from Jesus’s framework of everything finding its fundamental concern in him (Luke 24:27). Indeed, although less blatant, Ruth’s inclusion in the Old Testament corpus caps off a stunningly ordinary example of divine intervention that perpetuates the family of promise. This, to be sure, is the underlying premise behind the concluding genealogy, which, as Block asserts, “reminds the readers that the story just told is more than an inspiring tale of a family of genuinely good people.”13 The apparent oddity of concluding this narrative with a catalog of names purposefully ushers the reader into the age of the kings by ending with David’s name, while also prophetically gesturing to the one who would be both David’s Son and Lord (cf. Matt. 22:41–45; Ps. 110:1). “The genealogy,” Dearman affirms, “concludes the account in an explicit effort to point forward, literarily speaking, to a subsequent phase in national history brought about by YHWH’s providential work.”14 In other words, a straight exegetical and homiletical line can be drawn from the end of Ruth to the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, and the recounting of the Messiah’s family (cf. Matt. 1:1, 5–6).

It is no perfunctory detail that Ruth, a Moabite widow, is incorporated into God’s covenant family, let alone that she serves as a grandmother of the long-awaited Messiah. Her inclusion is a token of what her promised Progeny would accomplish — namely, making a way for all who are “far off” to be “brought near” (Eph. 2:11–21). “Ultimately,” notes Justin Jackson, “Boaz’s redemptive work in purchasing himself a Moabitess bride sets readers on a typological trajectory that undeniably leads to Jesus.”15 What Boaz does for Ruth and, by proxy, Naomi’s heritage is what the gospel announces has been done for the entire world through the work of the true and better Kinsman-Redeemer — the Christ of God, who “partook of the same things” with which humankind is subjected, that is, “flesh and blood,” so that he might be humanity’s nearest redeemer, rescuing us from all our places of need, loss, sorrow, and sin (Heb. 2:14–18). He alone takes all the initiative and does all that is necessary to bring about our redemption “because of the great love with which he loved us” (Eph. 2:4). The ordinary story of Ruth, therefore, is one that is imprinted with the fingerprints of the God who weaves every moment of our lives into a tapestry of his grace.

A week ago or so, I shared some thoughts on Philippians 2 and the self-emptying of Christ that gives the church its unity, along with the help of R. C. H. Lenski, whose New Testament commentaries have proven invaluable in recent years. If you haven’t interacted with Lenski’s work, I’d highly commend it to you. But within his treatment of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi and the kenosis, he cites Franz Pieper (1852—1931) at length. Pieper’s comments on Christ’s descent are well-placed within Lenski’s project and well worth your time, too. Hence, this brief post.

For the life of me, I can’t ascertain the original source to cite it, but I’ll include the notation to Lenski’s work if you’d like to see it in context for yourself. What Pieper draws on is the unfathomable chasm of Christ’s coming and the incomprehensible “equipment,” as he puts it, with which he girds himself as he carries out the Father’s will. He writes:

The earthly warrior, who determines to gain the victory, girds his sword to his side and strives to be high. Christ’s equipment for the victory to be gained develops in the opposite direction. Christ . . . divested, emptied himself to naught, became lowly, altogether lowly. But this strange equipment accords with the nature of the work to be done. It was not to conquer cities. It was also not by a divine word of power to hurl him into hell who by God’s permission held men captive. It was, in the execution of the divine redemption method, by substitution, through being obedient, suffering, and dying, to pay the sin guilt of men. That, to be sure, could not be effected by laying aside his deity partly or completely. He could not do without his deity in his state of humiliation. He had to attach the full weight of his deity to his being obedient and to his suffering and dying. Even in the midst of his death he had to be the mighty God in order by his death to conquer death, to raise up again the temple of his body (John 2:19, 21), to take up his life again (John 10:18).1

What’s notable about this paragraph is not only the way Pieper refers to the incarnation without directly mentioning it, but also how he alludes to Nicene or even Chalcedonian Christology without overtly broaching that subject either. Jesus’s self-emptying, so to speak, wasn’t so much a matter of losing something as much as it was adding. Without surrendering a milligram of his deity, the Christ of God took on flesh and “the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7) so he could be about his Father’s business.

I think the bulk of the debate concerning the kenosis centers on the incorrect premise that Christ “set aside his glory.” But this frames the incarnation in terms of subtraction, which sends the whole conversation backwards. When the eternal Word became incarnate, it was addition all the way down. It was deity added to skin and bone; glory to humility and obedience “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). Within the paradox of the infinite Word clothed in finite flesh, we’re given a glimpse of the fullness of God, hidden in weakness to do that which only God can do.

Grace and peace.