Excitement, Exaggeration, Moderation? Your Choice in Jesus.
Introduction
My beautiful bide, coming up 50 years on Jan 5 2025, said to me a few days ago, “You moderate everything.” She made this exasperated utterance in response to my relatively muted reply to her excitement about my latest cardiology results. (Heart capacity up from 56 to 60 percent, diastolic dysfunction down from 2 to 1, valve problem down from moderate to mild. In other words, everything is trending in the right direction. PTL.) Since Donna is, like Sarah (1 Pet 3:6), a wise and holy woman, I necessarily listened to her with care and started to pray about any revelation that might come from our Father from her remark. The Lord is starting to show me that despite my long struggles to converse freely with folk of “low affect”, i.e. people with flat emotions, I at times suffer from this same problem. When that is we compare our inner states with the glorified affections/emotions of the heavenly Jesus! “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (Ps 43:4 cf. Jude 24) This teaching is the consequence of my ongoing reflections. As always, we should first go to the Bible, not culture, with an emphasis of Jesus himself.
Excitement
After starting to pray into this personal problem, I happened, by divine providence it seems, to come upon a note on the Hebrew text of Ezekiel 47 (vv. 1,2,7) “”I was struck by the sight of water issuing….and behold water trickling…. I was struck by the sight of trees….”, About which the commentator (Daniel Block Ezek vol 2, p. 690) notes these were expressions of “excited perception”. This same excited perception underlies the prophetic books of the OT and the visionary passages in Revelation, a biblical work famous for its “poor Greek” (https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1999-05/31163.html). The explanation for this is largely explainable by the intensity of the experiences of its author, the apostle John. For John the dragon, beast, frogs, rivers of blood etc. appeared in living colour and depth (12:3ff; 13:1ff; 14:20; 16:13). The remarkable thing is that ordinary mortals survive and speak of such powerful transcendent revelations; “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple…And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone!” (Isa 6:1, 4-5); “the Spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me.” (Ezek 3:14); “When I saw him (glorified reigning Christ), I fell at his feet as though dead” (Rev 1:17).Biblical prophecy in its essential nature as “the testimony of Jesus”, the eternal Lamb (Rev 13:8; 19:10), essentially carries intense affect/emotionality. As those for whom the resurrection is always a close reality, prophets are perpetually revived, and disturbed, people!! There are however evil powers working to diminish this condition.
Exaggeration or Moderation?
The above choice is false because it is worldy-wise. I once worked with someone who used to make jokes about gospel preachers who are evangel-astic. The numbers used by such folk for church attendance, conversions, healings, repentance etc are always exaggerated. This unbiblical immature disposition to which evangelists are excitedly prone is a sure sign of immaturity of spirit and need to impress. Bur scripture teaches, “no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:21 cf. Prov 10:5; Rev 14:5). I cannot tolerate exaggeration, but in ungodly reaction, unlike Jesus, tend to err in the direction of moderation. A close family friend from my childhood, a man very gentle and of the successful middle class, often said, “All things in moderation.” (This is the ancient ethics of Aristotle https://communitywiki.org/wiki/AristotelianMean cf. “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” Oscar Wilde) One of his man’s attractive features was that he was NOT like my father, a man of whom I was long afraid. Emphasising moderation is an understandable disposition, especially in the light of the political currents of today, but it is not a Christ centred value. We must re-centre in the Spirit of the Lord’s grievous death and joyous resurrection .
Vital Truth
Decades ago, the Lord started to challenge me about the overcontrolled nature of my preaching. One way he did this was through quotations in a commentary on 2 Corinthians by historical theologian Phillip Hughes. These were from John Chrysostom (347-407 AD), literally “Golden Mouthed”, noted for his famous preaching. They are examples of “prophetic preaching” (https://preachingsource.com/journal/needed-prophetic-preaching/). As archbishop of the famous city of Constantinople, John preached fearlessly in a way that would see him sent into exile and perishing through exhaustion. In expounding the death of the Baptist, all his hearers knew he was referring to the empress Eudoxia, a notorious waster of royal funds to the neglect of the poor. His oration commenced with : ‘Again Herodias raves; again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John’s head on a platter….’” (cf. Matt 14:1-12). If the mouth of our pastors/teachers/pray-ers/Bible study leaders is to echo the mouth of God, “whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God” (1 Pet 4:11), the desperate need of today is for men, women and youth through whom the voice of the ascended glorified Jesus resounds. My old mentor Geoffrey Bingham (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bingham) once told me that prophetic preaching would bring revival to the Australian Church. I fully agree, but conscious of the limits of the availability of the pulpit, would add “prophetic praying”.
Suffering and Affections
The last of the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, wrote a classic on the phenomena of revival, several of which he was graced to birth in North America. Fiercely resisted by the orthodox of his day, but befriended by George Whitefield, his Religious Affections is unparalleled in its exposition of a move of God. “All the virtues of the Lamb of God, His humility, patience, meekness, submission, obedience, love and compassion, are exhibited to our view in a manner the most tending to move our affections of any that can be imagined.” To paraphrase, when we experience the power of the presence of the eternal Lamb (Rev 13:8; 19:10), we are mightily moved emotionally to worship in love, praise and sacrificial obedience. The last of these the true test and lasting sign of real revival.
Conclusion
Following Jesus commonly means feeling emotions we would rather NOT embrace. To put it most simply, to accept feelings which seem to contradict what we are, our natural nature. But is Christ, the glorified heavenly Lord, we find our “life” (Col 3:3), a life that often feels differently from what we are comfortable with, whether in agony or ecstasy. In all things we must submit to Jesus Sonly Lordship over us. This is a huge challenge to consistent discipleship in our super- indulged Western society. We must not only think differently but feel differently, and such challenges to our affections must never be resisted! If we conform to our natural emotions, no matter how orthodox our theology, nothing will change. Only submission to the affections of the Son of God will witness heaven opened wide to the Spirit and the Word. Hallelujah Amen to that! Christ’s baptism belongs to each of us: “When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. 22 And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”” (Luke 3:21-22)