I was sitting at one of the outdoor tables of our friendly neighborhood Starbucks this morning, enjoying a tasty cup of joe with some friends when… the air was pierced by the blaring of a nearby car alarm.  Apparently, a lady with a new SUV was not familiar with her security system.

The really funny part came when she just got in the car and started it.  The horn kept blaring.  She backed out of her parking space.  The horn kept blaring.  A guy walked to her window offering a helping hand.  The horn kept blaring.  She shook her head and scowled at him.  The horn kept blaring.  The guy shrugged and walked away.  The horn kept blaring.  She gunned it, and drove out of the parking lot, the horn kept blaring… until it faded off into the distance, alerting any unwary crosswalk users of her imminent approach.

I felt bad for that lady.  What an embarrassment to drive around with your car alarm horn going off.  Lessons in humility aren’t always this obvious, but this one is stark.  As he walked into the Starbucks, the would-be Good Samaritan shrugged and said, “All she had to do was put the key in the door.” But she didn’t want to listen.  A little help from outside herself could have spared her a lot of embarrassment.  But that takes humility.  Surely this is why 1 Peter 5:5 says,

“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

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Mark explained on Sunday that “kindness is relating to sinners with hearty good-will.” Nowhere, he told us, do we see what kindness is like than in Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross. He read this excerpt from When God Weeps, by Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes:

The Savior was now thrown to men quite different from the eleven. The face that Moses had begged to see–was forbidden to see–was slapped bloody (Exodus 33:19-20). The thorns that God had sent to curse the earth’s rebellion now twisted around his own brow. His back, buttocks, and the rear of his legs felt the whip–soon they looked like the plowed Judean fields outside the city. “On with the blindfold!” someone shouts. “That’s it–now spin him. Who hit you? Heh, heh.” By the time the spitting is through, more saliva is on him than in him. No longer can he be recognized. “Cut him down from the post. Send him toting his crossbar to the playground.” Up Skull Hill to the welcome of other poorly paid legionnaires enjoying themselves.

“On your back with you!” One raises a mallet to sink in the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own. Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who holds his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The victim wills that the soldier live on–he grants the warrior’s continued existence. The man swings.

As the man swings, the Son recalls how he and the Father first designed the medial nerve of the human forearm–the sensations it would be capable of. The design proves flawless–the nerve performs exquisitely. “Up you go!” They lift the cross. God is on display in his underwear, and can scarcely breathe. (pp. 52-53)

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We were at caregroup tonight, caring for some friends in a trial, and I shared this verse with them:

“Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation.” Psalm 68:19

It occurred to me a little later that this verse means grace is not an allergy shot. When I was in high school, my allergies were really bad. For a while, I got allergy shots. One stick meant that for about six weeks, I was impervious to the perils of pollen. I didn’t need a daily pill to sustain me against ragweed, mold spores and dust. I didn’t even have to think about it.

Grace isn’t like that. God doesn’t give us a hefty dose to sustain us for an extended period: instead, he daily bears us up. He gives us grace each day, for that day. An implication of this is that we need to seek God for grace each day, through reading his word, through prayer, through fellowship with other believers, through the preaching of His Word.

If you’re experiencing trial today, I hope you can declare with the psalmist: “Blessed be the Lord.” For he is bearing you up today; he is your salvation.

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This verse from 1 Peter fits well with what we’ve been hearing on Sunday mornings from 1 Corinthians 13:

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8)

That we should love one another earnestly, no genuine Christian would doubt. What I find curious about this verse is the motivation: “since love covers a multitude of sins.” What does it mean to “cover” sins? Does it mean to ignore, as in “to gloss over?” Or to simply forgive, whether the offender wants forgiveness or not? I didn’t fully understand this, so I looked it up, and I was fascinated to learn that word “cover” comes from the same word that is translated “swamped” in Matthew 8:24:

“And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves…”

It seems that the idea here is that a Christian is so aware of the love that he has received from God through Christ, that he can’t help but respond to sin with more love. Or to use Mark’s phrase from Sunday: with hearty good-will. Certainly there are times when we have been sinned against and need to be reconciled with others, but so many of our conflicts could die an early death if we would put away bitterness and grudges and cover sin with love. I like the picture of love for others dousing the flames of conflict by swamping the offense of sin. I think this is why Wayne Grudem explains the meaning of this verse like this:

“Where love abounds in a fellowship of Christians, many small offences, and even some large ones, are readily overlooked and forgotten. But where love is lacking, every word is viewed with suspicion, every action is liable to misunderstanding, and conflicts abound…” (Grudem, 1 Peter, pp 173-174)

Where does this hit home for you? Ask your parents if you have been less than loving and have failed to cover sins - especially toward your siblings. Here’s a question you can ask your brothers and sisters: “Are you more aware of my love and affection for you or my anger and bitterness?

Let’s let love cover a multitude of sins for the sake of the gospel.

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May is a busy birthday month for the Whitacres. We celebrate the birthdays of Nicole, my Dad, and my Pop-Pop, all within a week. So I laughed pretty hard when I read in Time Magazine last week that “two Texas brothers, ages 63 and 65, have been mailing each other the same recycled birthday card for 42 years!”

This is funny to me because my mom recently told me that my great-grandmother would ask people to write the notes in her cards in pencil–so that she could erase the note and reuse the card.

What funny birthday traditions do you have in your family?

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Last week, as he was preparing for Sunday’s message on 1 Corinthians 13:4, Mark asked us: “how would you define the word ‘kindness’?” I thought: “It’s being nice to people.” So I was served yesterday when Mark helped us understand how the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love makes kindness work in a much more meaningful way:

“Love will dispose us to relate to sinnners with kindness and hearty goodwill.”

Mark did go on to explain that I was partly right: kindness is relating to others with their good in mind. But it is more than that: it is goodwill shown even when being sinned against. Mark pointed us to this quotation from D.A. Carson:

“Love is kind - not merely patient or long-suffering in the face of injury, but quick to pay back with kindness what it received in hurt.”

As Mark explained, no one has shown us what kindness, motivated by genuine love is like better than Jesus Christ. No one has been more sinned against and yet acted with so much mercy and benevolent goodwill towards ill-deserving sinners than He.

Mark also helped us see how no one has shown us what kindness is like more clearly in our daily lives than our moms. Because they are around sinners all day every day (yes, that would be you and me), they are often sinned against, and have so many opportunities to show their kindness every day.

Did you spend time yesterday honoring Mom for how she shows kindess in your house? If not, don’t let the day end without taking time to encourage and thank your Mom for how she has shown kindness to you! She has demonstrated through her actions what Jesus Christ is like.

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It might have been the mohawk that did it. Or it might have been that his dwelling place is a dark corner of my dark cubicle, deep in the recesses of the Sovereign Grace Church offices, far from any natural sunlight. Or it might have been my black thumb: I am really good at killing plants. (I had a cactus in my dorm room in college; I accidentally killed it by over-watering it!)

Whatever happened, Ed’s verdant mane has vanished.

I’ve not been so successful with other gardening endeavors. Somehow I’ve killed one of the bushes in front of the house
(I’m blaming it on the cicadas):

And Ed’s cousin, a patch of grass I’m trying to nurse into existence around our mailbox, isn’t faring so well, either:

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I witnessed a bittersweet juxtaposition this morning. At 11am, at Providence Baptist Church, I savored the wedding of two dear friends, Marcus and Melanie. This event was nothing but joy, owing to my love and respect this couple. Mel was one of the first people I met when my family visited the church 14 years ago.

As I approached the church, I could not miss the massive motorcade of fire trucks, police cars, and motorcyles assembling across the street at McLean Bible Church. They were preparing for a 1pm service honoring Detective Vicky Armel, slain this week in the line of duty.

While these two events–one joyous and one tragic–were clearly separated by Route 7, I experienced a curious mingling of emotion in my soul. How is it that I can simultaneously rejoice with my newly married friends and mourn the senseless and tragic murder of an honorable public servant?

But this is typical of the human condition, is it not? Our entire lives are a blend of blessing and tragedy, of joy and sorrow. This won’t surprise us, if we remember our Bibles. We live in what theologians call “the already and the not yet.” Here’s what that means: by his death on the Cross, Jesus secured for us access to the power of the age to come. He has given us a taste of heaven. As Christians, in many ways, we are already experiencing the blessings that will be fully ours in the future. And yet, we have not yet been set free from this sin-ravaged world. We are sinners surrounded by other sinners. Nothing is the way it is suppposed to be; sin has tainted everything.

And so our experience is painfully conglomerate. We have Christ, so we already enjoy (though not fully) the blessings of heaven. But we have not yet escaped this fallen world, so suffering remains our lot. Surely Job felt this unbearable tension when he spoke the words recorded in Job 1:21:

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I love Job’s affirmation of God’s goodness, whether he is tasting of the already (the Lord gave) or the not yet (the Lord has taken away). Either way, Job’s response is faith-filled worship: “blessed be the name of the Lord.”

How can we worship like Job when suffering strikes? How can we walk in humble thanksgiving when savoring prosperity? By remembering the already and the not yet. Then we will be able to walk in the “patient endurance that is in Christ Jesus” (Revelation 1:9).

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As you know, we will be honoring Seniors tonight at five15. You also need to know that Molly and Regina have created a way for all the Seniors to be honored: they are producing some boxes, one for each Senior.  After five15, we’ll be able to write notes to the Seniors to thank them for their example and friendship. I’m telling you this so you can begin thinking about what you would like to say to these Seniors to thank and encourage them tonight.

See you tonight!

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Parents, I recently stumbled across this post in Justin Taylor’s blog, linking to three messages by Dr. Albert Mohler. He discusses the opportunities and challenges of “Raising Teens in the Media Culture.”

Part 1 is about the nature of media, culture, and adolesence. In Part 2 he discusses music, movies, and TV. Part 3 is an analysis of teenagers and the internet.

Dads, I would particularly recommend this for you as you seek to lead your family in how to navigate our media-saturated culture. You could easily listen to this series in a week’s worth of commutes.

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