E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
Tripp Awe (with Study Questions)
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9757-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do
E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9757-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Paul David Tripp (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, an award-winning author, and an international conference speaker. He has written numerous books, including Lead; Parenting; and the bestselling devotional New Morning Mercies. His not-for-profit ministry exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life. Tripp lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Luella, and they have four grown children.
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War
On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
Psalm 145:5
When you see or hear the word war, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of the great world wars that changed the course of human history. Or maybe you think of the seemingly endless conflicts that plague the Middle East. Or maybe you live in the inner city and think of the gang and drug wars that turn once-safe communities into battle zones. Perhaps you think of the domestic wars that trouble marriages and families and often lead to divorce or the political wars that rob the government of its ability to secure the welfare of its citizens. All these wars are real and important, but none of them rises to the level of significance of another war that has determined the course of human history and the lives of every individual who has ever lived. What is that war? It’s the war of awe, the war that is fought on the turf of every human being’s heart.
Between the “already” of the sin of Adam and Eve and the “not yet” of the final redemption, a war wages over who or what will rule and control the awe capacity that God has established within the heart of every human being. As we have already seen, since every person is created with a capacity for awe, everyone is searching for a way to exercise that capacity. This awe capacity was meant to drive us to God in wonder and worship, but since sin separates us from him, our capacity for awe gets kidnapped by things other than God. So in grace, God does battle for the awe of our hearts. You could argue that one of the fundamental purposes of the great redemptive story and the person and work of Jesus is to recapture our hearts for the awe of God and God alone.
This brings us to the subject of this chapter. Because the Bible is essentially the telling of the grand redemptive story, accompanied by God’s necessary explanatory notes, it also tells the story of this war of awe. Scripture brilliantly depicts for us the nature and results of what I will call in this chapter awe wrongedness (AWN). The biblical retelling of AWN is written for our instruction and our rescue, helping us recognize the deep danger of sin in our hearts and hunger for the rescue that only Jesus can provide. I want to trace this AWN theme throughout Scripture so you can be wise to the war that rages in your heart too.
I wish I could say that this war doesn’t rage in my heart, but I can’t. Sadly, AWN themes are still active in my life as well. Sometimes that means physical things rule my heart more than they should. Sometimes that means I am full of myself and act more out of pride than confidence in God. Sometimes that means I care more about the appreciations and respect of others than I do about bringing glory to God. I don’t have to reflect long on my daily living to see how much the war described in this chapter and so graphically depicted in Scripture is still being fought on the battleground of my heart.
Awe Gone Wrong
It has to be without debate the saddest story ever told. Not a day in your life or mine passes without us dealing with the results of this story. This single event has made everything since harder, more dangerous, and more painful than God designed it to be. Its results bring trouble into your private life. It wreaks havoc on your marriage and relationships. It makes parenting arduous. It lies at the bottom of human conflict and global war. It makes the delight of food, money, and sex dangerous. This story captures the moment when the war of awe began.
Clearly, we can find no more powerful, graphic, and helpful portrayal of AWN than in the very moment it began in the garden of Eden as captured in Genesis 3:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Gen. 3:1–7)
This is a shocking story. It is tragically true, but I’m afraid that we are so completely familiar with it that it doesn’t shock us anymore. Adam and Eve had it all. Every need was supplied. There was no sin, sickness, or suffering of any kind. Everything in creation did what it was supposed to do. God was in his rightful place and willingly descended to earth to enjoy the perfect communion he had with the people he had made. Yes, there’s no doubt about it: it was paradise.
But that paradise was soon to be shattered like fine china dropped on concrete. Adam and Eve were discontented with everything; they wanted more. And at the bottom of their insane quest for more was AWN. The Serpent held out to them the one thing they didn’t have, shouldn’t have, and could never have—God’s position. He told them that all they had to do was step over God’s clear boundaries, and they would become like God. This dangerous fantasy now lurks in the heart of every sinner. We want godlike recognition, godlike control, godlike power, and godlike centrality. This was the initial moment when awe of self overrode awe of God and set the agenda for every person’s thoughts, desires, choices, and behavior. For billions of people ever since, awe of self has literally driven every selfish, antisocial, and immoral thing we do.
In surprising and tragic AWN, Adam and Eve ate the prohibited fruit, and the glorious shalom that enveloped all creation was smashed into history-altering pieces. No brain is big enough to calculate the damage that moment did. But one thing we can know for sure: at that moment, AWN was unleashed on earth and with it a war for the heart of every human being. The Bible could not comprehensively recount the true devastation of sin nor fully chronicle this war so central to the Bible’s main theme—the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, in the midst of its central story, the Bible graphically tells and retells the story of AWN. It is the stain splashed on every page of God’s Word.
In the unveiling of the AWN drama in Scripture, it doesn’t take long for it to explode into the unthinkable—fratricide (see Gen. 4:1–16). Cain brought a sacrifice, but it was not a sacrifice of true, selfless worship of God, or else what happened next would never have occured. This story confronts us with the cruelest of ironies: one of the places where we most powerfully see AWN is in supposed acts of worship. If Cain’s heart was really motivated by awe of God, then when his sacrifice was rejected, he would have grieved over it, confessed to the inadequacy of his offering, and joyfully presented a more acceptable sacrifice to God. But instead, he violently envied his brother and, in an act of jealous rage, ended his brother’s life. This too is a shocking and unsettling story. It’s the kind of story in the local paper that would make you sick to your stomach: brother kills brother. Cain didn’t have a sibling problem, a sacrifice problem, or a religious ceremony problem. No, Cain had an awe problem, and the blood of Abel cries out as a result of his AWN.
We find a principle here, one displayed in a myriad of biblical stories: in the heart of a sinner, awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self. This is the great war of wars.
God’s summary of this war inside humanity in Genesis 6:5–6 should send chills down your spine: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” It should scare you to death when you read that God is sorry or grieved for something that he created. You know immediately that this is very, very serious, to say the least. God’s indictment of humanity is comprehensive and inescapably dark. Everything people think and want is wrong. Every motivation is evil. Every viewpoint and craving is tainted with iniquity. What’s the bottom line here? What humans desire violates God’s desires for them. The boundaries that man sets for himself go past the boundaries that God has ordained. Everything you think, desire, and say offends God because you don’t care about God anymore. You don’t care what pleases him. You don’t care about his ownership and rulership of your life. You don’t care about his holy will and his eternal glory. No, all you care about is you and what you want. Your problem is not environmental. It’s not relational. No, your problem is deeply spiritual. In your God-forgetfulness, you’ve put yourself in the center. And the evil...
