Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 12

Elder Home Visits

The King’s Cross elders and deacons met yesterday for our annual vision meeting. This is an annual opportunity to review the previous year and make bigger picture plans for the coming years. One of the significant items to be thankful for is how many more of you there are this year, about 140 new members since this time last year, including 66 baptisms. And with that, God has raised up 5 new elders, 2 new deacons, as well as 2 new deacons in training. God is very good. 

Related to that, one of the things we discussed yesterday was how we can continue growing in our elder care for you. As you hopefully know, when you become a member of King’s Cross, you are assigned an elder. You’re always welcome to talk to any of the elders or pastors about anything, but this is our way of making sure that at least one elder is keeping an eye out for you and occasionally checking in. The King’s Cross elders meet every Monday afternoon, and once a month one of the elders gives a short report on the folks on his list. With 8 parish elders, we get through the lists about 1.5 times per year. Elders have historically reached out via email, phone call, or offered to take folks out to lunch or coffee, or sometimes schedule a visit in your home. 

The elders specifically asked me to give you all a heads up that you should be expecting more requests for home visits. Some of you come from backgrounds where this has never happened, and if an elder reaches out to schedule a visit in your home, you don’t need to panic as if you’re trouble (unless you are). Others of you come from traditions where you might be used to a pretty regimented schedule of elder visits, perhaps with your name even printed in the bulletin for that week’s elder visit with everyone praying for you. We’re definitely aiming for something less rigid, but we really do believe that it will help us know you better and pray for you and shepherd you better. So be on the look out for that. And lastly, if you think you might have fallen through the cracks and can’t remember if an elder has ever reached out, please send up a flare. 

A Taste of Sovereign Grace

One of the most precious Christian doctrines is the doctrine of election or predestination. It is sometimes mocked and rejected, even by Christians, but the mysterious glory is that before the foundation of the world, God chose from Adam’s impudent, rebellious race a fixed but vast multitude to save. There was nothing in us that made us worthy of His grace, nothing in us that made us even likeable. It was not even foreseeing what we might be or what we might do if He saved us, as though He picked the people who respond best to His grace. No, it was sheer grace, pure kindness and mercy, in order to display the riches of his glory and mercy. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and the way we know we are among the elect and chosen is because when Christ is proclaimed we love Him, when the Cross and resurrection are declared, it fires our hearts, and when this doctrine is preached, it makes us fall down in worship and repentance. We were not worthy. We are not worthy. And so we rejoice with trembling.

But this doctrine doesn’t stop there. This doctrine of election and predestination means that God not only chose us, but He chose us to be conformed to the image of His Son throughout the course of our lives and to finally be glorified with Christ Jesus forever and ever. This means absolutely nothing can separate us from His love. This election is written in the granite of God’s eternal counsel and might. And this election was forever confirmed in the nails that were driven through the hands and feet of our Lord. Nothing can stop His purpose and plan: not your sin, not Satan, not demons, not political madness, not heresy, nothing at all. Everything in this world, everything in our lives must serve God’s purpose. The doctrine of election means that the children of God are utterly safe in His hands. Nothing can touch us without His will, and everything that touches us must serve His purpose to display His glorious grace and bring us to glory. And this meal proclaims that sovereign grace. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by John Baker on Unsplash

Living in Tumultuous Times

In God’s providence we live in tumultuous times. We are some of the most blessed human beings who have ever lived, with the technologies and conveniences and wealth we enjoy. And we live in corrupt and degenerate times. As Cotton Mather once said, “Religion begot prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.” God warned Israel of this very thing in Deuteronomy, saying that their great temptation with all of God’s blessings would be to forget God and think they had gotten all their prosperity themselves. And the greater the blessing, the greater the disaster when a people forget God. 

And we live in those calamitous times. The madness that we are seeing around us is no accident at all. When you sow the wind, you always reap the whirlwind. We’ve already seen the opening convulsions in 2020, politically, economically, culturally, and 2024 is shaping up to be another rodeo. How should Christians think about this? How should we prepare?

First, remember that human beings are the most precious created resource. Think of preparing for tumultuous times like a Christian. Which means get your heart clean before God first. You will be in no position to be helpful if the wheels come off if your heart is clogged up with all kinds of lusts and bitterness. If you want to see clearly to know what to do, get rid of the logs in your eyes. Then make sure you’re in fellowship with as many people around you as possible, beginning with the people you live with. Confess your sins, get rid of your grudges, forgive freely. 

Finally, one of the great lessons of the Old Testament is that God is just, and He does not destroy the righteous with the wicked. He would not have destroyed Sodom if there had been 10 righteous, and he still delivered Lot and later He delivered Rahab and her family from Jericho. God’s judgments fall with laser precision. When there was nothing but darkness in Egypt, there was light in Goshen; when the angel of death passed over, there was blood over the doorposts of those who believed. So do not fear the judgments of God. He is Your Father. He counts every hair on your head. Remain faithful at your stations, serving your people, trusting your God. 

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

The Pride of Women & Cowardice of Men

Biblical Sexuality Sunday 2024
Ezek. 23:31-49

Prayer: Most Holy God, we tremble before You because we know that our land is under Your just judgment. We have defied You and Your Word. And our nations deserve to be utterly destroyed. But we know that in Your wrath, You remember mercy. So as we gather before Your Word now, we plead on behalf of our nations the blood of Jesus Christ the righteous, and we ask You to remember Your mercy and grant us thorough repentance for our great sins through this particular Word. And we are bold to ask for this because we ask for it in the name of the King of the Universe, the Lord Jesus Christ, and Amen.   

Introduction
In January 2022, the Canadian government enacted Bill C-4, effectively criminalizing Christian preaching, teaching, and counseling that upholds Biblical morality for human sexuality. Many pastors in Canada have determined to preach messages annually until the law is repealed and have invited American pastors to join them in proclaiming God’s truth about sexual sin and the gospel of grace. 

The Bible teaches that when God judges a people, it often comes as a kind of suicidal sexual madness. Apart from God there is only sorrow and destruction, but sometimes when people defy God for a while, He turns them over to their degrading demands. Ezekiel describes the fruit of this “sexual liberation” as self-mutilation, murder of children, and complete destruction. 

The Text: “Thus saith the Lord God; thou shalt drink of thy sister’s cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of thy sister Samaria…” (Ez. 23:32-49).

Summary of the Text
God calls the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and the southern kingdom of Judah “harlots” (Ez. 23:3) whom He names “Aholah” and “Aholibah” (Ez. 23:4, 36), which mean “her tabernacle” and “my tabernacle in her.” Samaria had built her own sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel with golden calves (1 Kgs. 12:28-29), imported from her adultery with Egypt (Ez. 23:8), and God delivered her into the hands of her Assyrian lovers (Ez. 23:9-10). But God says that Judah (Aholibah) was even worse, lusting after the Assyrians and the Babylonians (Ez. 23:11-31). 

So God declares that Judah will drink the same cup of judgment as her harlot sister (Ez. 23:32-33). The effect of God’s judgment will be a kind of violent, drunken madness that will result in them breaking the cup into pieces and cutting off their own breasts (Ez. 23:34-35). This madness also included murdering their own children in service to their idols, even while continuing to pretend Sabbath keeping and worship (Ez. 23:36-39). And even while these judgments were falling, Judah had the audacity to put on her makeup and get dolled up for additional rounds with other lovers (Ez. 23:40-44). God says that the just penalty for this kind of high-handed adultery is death so that all women may be taught not to act with such lewdness (Ez. 23:45-49).    

The Fruit of Feminism
While God is certainly using symbolic language to condemn the idolatry of His people, the conclusion is not at all symbolic: “Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness” (Ez. 23:48). While men were responsible for and contributed significantly to the idolatry of Israel and Judah, women played a significant role. There is perhaps a foreshadowing of this in the harlots who came before Solomon, fighting over a baby (1 Kgs. 3:16ff), but of course Solomon went after many women who turned his heart away from the Lord to other gods (1 Kgs. 11:1ff). Ahab married Jezebel who imported Baal worship into Samaria (1 Kgs. 16:31ff). By the time of Josiah’s reformation, the houses of the sodomites were “where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kgs. 23:7). And there were many wicked mothers in Israel (1 Kgs. 15, 21:1, 19, 23:31, 36, 24:8, 18, 2 Chron. 24:7). 

Feminism is no new heresy. It began in the Garden of Eden when Eve ignored God’s clear word and led her husband into temptation. And the fruit of feminism is elective mastectomies and abortion (Ez. 23:34, 37). Feminism always destroys women, children, families, and nations.

Handed Over To Our Idols
Ezekiel says that God gives wicked people over to this judgement. He causes them to drink this cup of madness (Ez. 23-32-34). We see this also in Proverbs with the sin of adultery: “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein” (Prov. 22:14). When God is angry with a man, he lets him fall into the pit of significant sexual sin. Likewise, Romans 1 says that God gives people over to uncleanness and lusts to dishonor their own bodies with one another in sexual perversion because of their idolatry (Rom. 1:24-27). In other words, pervasive sexual perversion is a sign that a people are serving other gods, and the perversion is the judgment. If we are to repent of our sexual sins, we must repent of our idols. And what are those idols? They often incarnate in images of wealth and power, but they can often be boiled down to two fundamental sins: the pride of women and the cowardice of men. 

Scripture says that Adam was not deceived in the garden, but the woman was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), and this is one of the reasons given for why a woman may not have authority over a man in the church and be an elder or preacher (1 Tim. 2:9-14). What is it that causes a woman to dress immodestly, to try to use her body to manipulate men, or to usurp true masculine authority? It is the blindness and deception of pride – often pride in beauty, power, or smarts, verbal prowess. 

But if Adam was not deceived, then why did he accept his wife’s offer? The most likely answer is that he despaired. Instead of fighting the dragon for his wife, instead of offering to die for his wife, he chose the cowardly path. Husbands and fathers who do not protect their wives and daughters continue in the same path of cowardice as Adam. We live in a nation overrun by male fear of female sin. But we ought to take a lesson from King Asa whose own mother made an idol, and Asa removed her from being queen and destroyed her idol (2 Chron. 15:16).

Applications
Jesus said He came for prostitutes and tax collectors. He did not come for those who think there is still time to fix things, time to make some minor adjustments. He came for the blind who knew they had no hope of receiving their sight. He came for sinners who know they deserve the full wrath of God (Rom. 6:23). He came for those who know that pride and cowardice are destroying them. 

Think of your idols of pride and cowardice like a lethal poison you’ve already swallowed. God’s judgement is a cup: “Thus saith the Lord God; thou shalt drink of thy sister’s cup deep and large: thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in derision; it containeth much. Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation” (Ez. 23:32-33). 

Our families, our churches, our nations are full of drunkenness and sorrow. The corpses of our babies make the Nazi’s look tame. And now we have young boys being given puberty blockers and girls mastectomies. And all of this is come upon us because of our sins, and our sins are a lethal poison working death in us. 

When a culture gets to this point there is no going back. There is no political solution. There is no structural solution. We have driven the train off the tracks and into the canyon and we are in freefall. It is in this place of absolute inability and powerlessness that the announcement of the gospel comes. 

And as a minister of the Gospel, this is the announcement: Jesus Christ the Righteous drank the cup of God’s wrath for you. Either we will drink the cup or Christ already has. These are the only options: either you drink death or Christ does for you. The glorious news is that if you will surrender all your pride, all your cowardice before Him, if you will acknowledge that you deserve His judgment, you will find that He has already suffered for all of it in your place. And you are forgiven and set free to be the man or woman God created you to be.  

Prayer: Father and God, have mercy upon us. Wherever there is any of this sinful rot in us, deliver us. Set us free by the blood of Christ. Have mercy upon us, and have mercy upon our neighbors, our families, and our nations. We know that there is no human hope, but Christ is no mere man. And so we hope in Him and trust in Him. And we pray to You as He taught us to pray, singing… 

Photo by Wesley Balten on Unsplash

Food & God

The first thing that God pointed out to Adam in the Garden was the menu: all the trees He had created to make food for the man. From the beginning, even in a perfect world, God wanted Adam to think of his relationship to God in terms of food and hunger and satisfaction. When Adam disobeyed and rebelled against God it was eating the wrong food at the wrong time. 

Later in the wilderness, Israel wrestled with God, again often with food: complaining about water, manna, and quail. When Jesus came, He fed the five thousand and the four thousand, and He said that He came down from Heaven as the true manna, the bread of life, that whoever ate and drank of Him would live forever. And He gave us the Lord’s Supper so that we might eat and drink and fellowship with Him until the end of the world. 

God has always presented Himself to us as our food. There is something about hunger that is meant to constantly teach us about our need for God. This is why fasting and feasting have always been integral parts of walking with God. You naturally think about food and drink multiple times a day. You tend to measure your days by meal times. 

All of this is meant to teach us that we need God like that. Just as you feel the physical hunger for physical food, you are to understand that you need God’s presence in your life constantly. How can you fight sin and glorify God continually? By communing with God constantly. Throughout your day, pray things like: “Lord, since you are with me, help me honor you now and always. Lord, grant me the grace to remain in Your presence and help me bring glory to your name in this task. Lord, please be with me now so that all that I do may be an expression of love for You.”

God invites you to think of Him as your food. And therefore, as you think about food, think about God. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Victoria Shes on Unsplash

A Marriage Tune Up

Eph. 5:22-33

Introduction
As we begin a new year, it’s worth reviewing the most basic assignments we have in our marriages. The central paradigm is the gospel, and the central duties are love and respect: husbands are commanded to love their wives and wives are commanded to respect their husbands. The question is not whether your marriage is talking about the gospel; the only question is: what is your marriage saying about Christ and His Church? 

As with many of these things that we hear often, it is incredibly important that we determine by God’s grace not to be merely hearers of the Word but doers. And this means focusing on your assignment and not hoping your spouse is getting the memo. Of course a message like this can be a good conversation starter, but the focus should always begin with dealing with yourself first (eg. logs in eyes, etc.).

The Text: “Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and He is the Savior of the Body…” (Eph. 5:22-33).

Summary of the Text
The Bible teaches that marriage is one of the central pictures of the gospel (Eph. 5:23-25, 32), and therefore generally speaking, the state of marriage in a land will tell you a lot about the state of the gospel in that land and therefore the state of that nation. Alexander de Tocqueville said, “Of the world’s countries, America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness.” Elsewhere he says, “It is in regulating the family,” that religion “works to regulate the state.” Many Americans want our nation to return to Christ, but they do not understand that faithful marriages are central to that project. 

This gospel is embodied by a wife submitting to her own husband as to the Lord Jesus (Eph. 5:22), and each husband taking responsibility for his wife just as Christ does as the head of the church (Eph. 5:23). This means that a wife is to obey her husband as the church obeys Christ in everything (Eph. 5:24). And husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, laying down his life for her efficaciously, making her pure and holy (Eph. 5:25-27). This love is exemplified in the way a man cares for his own body, nourishing and cherishing, again, just as the Lord does the Church (Eph. 5:28-30). A man leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife, and this is all a great mystery that proclaims Christ and the church (Eph. 5:31-32). Therefore, since the stakes are so high, a man must love his wife, and a wife must reverence her husband (Eph. 5:33).  

Husbands Love
The command is for husbands to love because men need to be reminded to do this and because it is what a wife particularly needs. A man more naturally tends to respect, but that is not the particular command given. Christ is the model of this love, and what the Bible particularly points out is the duty of taking responsibility for her as her head and sacrificing for her good (Eph. 5:23, 25-27). This requires you to understand the difference between responsibility and guilt: you may not be personally guilty for some sin of your wife, but you are responsible for all of it, just as you may not be guilty for some injuries in your body but you are responsible (Eph. 5:28). Christ is the only One who had the right to claim innocence, but He took responsibility for us.

This love also requires thoughtfulness about your wife’s needs. You are not to love her aimlessly. You are to love like Christ, which is to say efficaciously. You are to give yourself for her to make her more holy and pure (Eph. 5:25-26). And you are to do this in order to present her to yourself more glorious and lovely, just like Jesus does (Eph. 5:27). Loving your wife well doesn’t mean doing whatever she wants; it means doing whatever it takes to make her a better woman. 

Wives Respect
The command is for wives to respect because women need to be reminded to do this and because it is what a man particularly needs. Women tend to more naturally love, and while that is certainly good (Tit. 2:4), the particular command is for wives to respect (Eph. 5:33). And this is also a word for single ladies: your standard for a man needs to be not whether you do or could love him; your standard needs to be: do you respect him? 

What is respect? Respect is honor, looking up to, thinking highly of, including the kind of trust that willingly submits to and obeys (Eph. 5:22, 24). Just as we live in a world that despises fathers; we live in a world that despises true husbands. And unfortunately many Christian women feel free to dishonor their husbands openly, making fun of them, talking them down, complaining about them, or simply being difficult for them, and it is often all dismissed with the hand-waving excuse, “oh, but I love him.” However, the example a woman is given is the obedience of the church to Christ. How would you have the Christian Church submit to Christ? Then show the world in your submissive respect for your husband. 

Fellowship Multiplied
This love and respect is designed by God to result in a glorious unity and fellowship. But sin has twisted every son and daughter of Adam, and the curse has particularly attacked marriage, creating tension and hurt where there was none before (Gen. 3:16). This is why the only way for a marriage to have true Christian fellowship is by the blood of the Lamb: “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:7). If this is true of Christian fellowship in general, it is most certainly true of Christian marriage in particular. So keep short accounts. Have no backlog of sin or bitterness between you and your spouse. Confess and forgive: that is how the blood of Christ cleanses you so you can walk in the light in fellowship (1 Jn. 1:9). 

But the other thing to underline here is that marriage fellowship is one of the primary contributors to all fellowship. What you are sharing with one another is either true Christian fellowship (koinonia) (1 Cor. 10:16, 1 Jn. 1:3) or else it is some kind of Satanic, pharisaical cancer. You are one with your spouse, and when you come here, you are sharing that with one another (1 Cor. 11). This fellowship is what you are multiplying with your children. And this is why our nation is in the state that it is in: our homes and marriages are often toxic cesspools.     

Conclusions
Never forget that these instructions come as part of the great “therefore” of Ephesians 4:1. We love because He loved us first. We work because we are His workmanship (Eph. 2:10). Which is to say that all of this is only possible by God’s grace. But grace is not something vague, like a Christian version of “luck” or “good vibes” or random windfalls. Grace is the personal favor and blessing of God in Jesus Christ. It begins with His personal forgiveness, but it also includes His personal gift of the wisdom and power to obey all of His commands: we stand in His grace (Rom. 5:1-2). Standing in His grace is like standing on the gold metal platform at the Olympics (only infinitely better). And it’s in that state that God calls you to love your wife or respect your husband. 

There are particular strengths and glories that men and women bring to the world, and they take shape as men take responsibility and love their wives and as women submit to their husbands and respect them. Harmony is not the result of everyone singing the same music. Harmony happens when each part sings the part assigned to them. And incidentally, you can’t sing your part well while trying to get your spouse to sing their part. You will encourage them the most to sing their part when you delight in your part the most. 

And this is the kind of harmony that builds Christian nations. 

Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash

That “Conservative” Bathsheba Calendar

Introduction
So then, Ultra Right Beer has released a “Conservative Dads Real Women of America” pin-up calendar – you know, twelve months of PG-13 cleavage, swimsuits, and slightly naughty poses in the kitchen. But don’t worry. It’s all completely “conservative” cleavage. None of those boobs ever voted for a democrat. But of course that is what these so-called “conservative women” are being presented as: boobs and butts and legs. Oh, and apparently one gal has guns. And all absolutely REAL, we are told breathlessly by the used car salesmen. And at the very same time, if those insults weren’t enough, piles of “Conservative Dads” are being mocked as nothing but cocks.

OK, maybe that’s not all they are, but the clear message is that a little bit of lust is just fine. A little bit of lust is human. A little bit of lust is conservative. And if you have a problem with this little bit of lust, you’re probably jealous or you’re a fundamentalist neanderthal or both. And we can’t win with puritanical prudes like Jenna Ellis or Meg Basham and Allie Beth Stuckey. If conservatism doesn’t have a little bit of lust it will be the party of nerds and losers.    

Not to be left in the dust of Mammon, Zondervan quickly announced that they have a “Conservative Dads Real Women of the Bible” devotional calendar releasing shortly, featuring Bathsheba partially submerged in her rooftop bathtub on the front cover with the verse “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys” (Song 2:1). 

Ok, not sure about the Zondervan calendar, but the Ultra Right Beer calendar is real. Real lame, but I digress. UItra Right Beer was launched last year by one Seth Weathers apparently as a response to the Bud Light suicide commercial featuring the crossdressing gonzo Dylan Mulvaney up to his waxed chest in a bubble bath. While folks familiar with the conservative world will recognize a number of the names of the women who chose to have their bodies ogled by conservative lust, the one that is likely to register to most folks is Riley Gaines, the former NCAA competitive swimmer who has courageously objected to men participating in women’s sports. The calendar even heralds its own virtue by donating 10% of the profits to the Riley Gaines Center to protect women’s sports “from extreme leftist ideology seeking to destroy real women.” 

This is like a Cancer Society calendar celebrating chain smoking. This is like an NBA basketball calendar with twelve months of midgets. This is like a Drivers Ed calendar for Conservative Teens with twelve months of pictures of teens happily drinking and driving. This is like calling government money for private schools “school choice.” Heh. You can’t fight extreme immorality with a little less immorality.

El Problemo                                                          
Seth Weathers responded somewhere with a picture of a woman in a hijab, only her eyes showing, saying that having heard all the complaints against “calendargate,” this Muslim lass would be the January 2025 model. Jenna Ellis vocally condemned the calendar and received all kinds of ridicule, including piles of normal pictures that she has posted of herself doing ordinary things. And regardless of whether I would have personally recommended every one of them (having a pretty overactive pastoral vibe-o-meter on selfie-posting), there is nevertheless a massive difference between a photo op of Bathsheba in her skivvies on the rooftop and the occasional selfie on the run. And this is why conservatives, up to this point, really can’t have nice things.  

Amid the cries that there’s nothing wrong with a little cleavage, what are you, some kind of pervert? Another good woman protested that the calendar was clearly celebrating the sexualization of these women rather than celebrating their true glory: motherhood and homemaking — where are all their children and strollers? And then, as if to prove that the point of the calendar was in fact lust, a Twitter mob began shrieking as though she was suggesting that children be included in the lust calendar. Ah. So the point is lust, then isn’t it? You can’t have it both ways. Either the point is sexual or it isn’t. And it clearly is. 

As I have pointed out previously, there are many on the conservative right who are not really interested in conservatism; they just don’t want the extreme excesses of the left. They want to return to a point earlier in the story where no one knew that the seeming nice man (introduced in chapter 3) was actually a grotesque villain (as came out in chapter 7). But the problem, el problemo, as we call it in the biz, is that this is like running the wrong way up the escalator and thinking you have solved some significant problem. But at best you’ve only delayed the inevitable outcome. You cannot deal with gross immorality by returning to an earlier stage of the lust. You cannot deal with a mass abuse psychosis (with thousands of middle school girls contemplating hormone suppressors and mastectomies) by returning to an earlier stage of the grooming. What is needed is full repentance. The sin must be repudiated utterly.

And yes, the grooming was the pinup calendars of the 1950s. It was the grooming of lust that said you can harbor adultery in your heart and that won’t impact your families, your churches, or your nation. And here we are, a near corpse of a nation, like the concubine raped all night and left for dead at the Levite’s doorstep, and these so-called conservatives want to go back to the beginning of the night with the cat calls and leering looks. Of course many Christians cannot even fathom really going back to the 1950s. Many Christian communities would be horrified for one of the ladies to show up to a church picnic in her bra and underwear, but if there’s water within hundred yards, feel free. And if you don’t act like a stripper like all the other girls, you’re probably a Islamofascist. And many “Christians” for fear of being thought weird, buy the $90 scrap of fabric that publicly proclaims you’re primary value is sexual. And incidentally, that has been happening for decades as women have been convinced that they have to sacrifice their modesty in order to swim very fast and win medals. We invited the lust of men into women’s athletics a long time ago with many of the required uniforms.

It’s actually been quite encouraging to see all the pushback on this calendar. 1950s “conservatism” is a dead end. Jesus said that adultery begins as lust in the heart. Men and women who do not honor the marriage bed and marriage vows and Christian modesty cannot be trusted to honor their vows to uphold the constitution or anything remotely resembling biblical justice or prudence. 

Collision of Religions
What we are seeing in real time is the collision of two rival religions. One is the religion of the Enlightenment that introduced a fundamental bifurcation between ultimate, transcendent truth, goodness, and beauty and this world’s public good, and Christianity, which says that you cannot have public good apart from transcendent truth, goodness, and beauty. One says you can have freedom and happiness apart from Christ, and the other says, how’s that working out for you? In other words, modern secularism has claimed that you can believe whatever you want privately and practice whatever faith you like in your heart or in your free time, but when it comes to the public square and the public good, everyone must assume neutrality and agnosticism. And that means, that you can do whatever you want in your private life, including lust, including adultery. But you can’t practice lust in private and get fidelity in public.

But if the resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Holy Spirit is anything, it is the public announcement that Christ is King of this world. This is the dominant message of the book of Acts. What the public officials did out in public, God reversed in public with many witnesses: “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God hath raised up… This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear” (Acts 2:23-24). 

The message of the Christian Church is the message of Pentecost, and it is a public message for all to see and hear. It is a message of repentance for all: kings, judges, senators, law enforcement, business men, pastors, seminary professors, journalists, brewers, and everyone. The son of David has been coronated King, and His throne is in heaven, over all kings and lords and authorities. 

In other words, there’s a sense in which we will either have the obscenity of Christ in the public square, or else we will have every other kind of obscenity in the public square. 

Conclusion
In the early 1800’s, Alexander de Tocqueville wrote, “Of the world’s countries, America is surely the one where the bond of marriage is most respected and where they have conceived the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness.” Elsewhere he explains how he sees religion having its most significant impact on the state: “It is in regulating the family,” that religion “works to regulate the state” he wrote.

Many Americans want our nation to return to Christ, but they do not understand that faithful marriages are central to that project. And the only way to have faithful marriages is for every form of lust to be repudiated and repented of. This does not at all mean a nation of hijabs. What a silly argument. We are Christians. There is a colossal difference between the adorning of a godly woman who is not hidden under layers of burlap and a striptease on the sidewalk or a calendar. 

Technology is a Tool

Technology is a tool, and modern communications technology is no different. Cranes and bulldozers are tools for lifting and carry heavy objects and moving earth. Smart phones and messaging and texting and social media platforms are tools that make the heavy lifting and moving of words and communication easier. So all by themselves, tools are gifts from God, and therefore the fundamental question is: what are you using them for? You can use a crane with a wrecking ball or a bulldozer to break things (and if that’s what needed to be done, that’s great).

Scripture teaches that the tongue is like a sword, like a flamethrower, like the rudder of a great ship, and therefore, communication technologies amplify the power of the tongue, for good or for ill. While social media can spread lies, slander, propaganda, pornography, and destruction, by the same token, it can be used for great good: spreading the truth, knowledge, gratitude, the gospel, and some measure of community. 

So what are you using these tools for? How are you teaching your family to use these tools? A father who buys his ten year old son a wrecking ball for Christmas may be considered the greatest dad ever for about fifteen minutes, until the first house on the street is leveled. But just as firearms and chain saws are dangerous but have good and lawful uses, parents who do not give any teaching or training for the right use of phones and social media are not preparing their children for the real world.

There is certainly freedom for greater or lesser use of various tools. But do not kid yourself in either direction. Do not pat yourself on the back for rejecting smart phones and social media apps, and do not pat yourself on the back for embracing them. This is really no better than congratulating yourself on whether or not you allow the use of hammers in your house. The question is: how is the tool being used? Are you talking about it? Are you discussing it? Are you checking in and walking together in wisdom? Don’t assume anything. Your goal is to love God and love one another with these tools in true wisdom.

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Christmas & the Outer Darkness

Christmas Eve 2023 Homily

If there is one thing our land lacks, it is the fear of God. Romans 3 says there’s none righteous, none seeks after God, all are unprofitable, our mouths are like open graves, our tongues are full of poisonous venom, full of cursing and lies and bitterness, shedding innocent blood, destruction and misery fill our days, there’s no knowledge of peace, and the final summary of it all is: there is no fear of God before their eyes. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then the refusal to fear God is the beginning of all kinds of destructive insanity. 

Even in the Christian Church, you do not hear messages on the fear of God, the wrath of God, the justice of God – even at Christmas, maybe especially at Christmas. But Christmas is all about the justice of God: “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Is. 9:7). Christmas is all about the zealous justice of God, which ought to make everyone tremble: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence // And with fear and trembling stand… Christ our God to earth descendeth // Our full homage to demand.”

But Christians rush to the verses about perfect love casting out fear, and remember: the angels told Mary and Joseph and the shepherds to “fear not.” Of course there is a kind of fear that Christ came to take away: the fear of death, the fear of torment. But there is also a kind of godly fear that Christ came to restore: “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb. 12:28). “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). And Jesus Himself said, “And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him” (Lk. 12:4-5). 

So what is this godly fear? It is an acknowledgement of God’s utter immensity and power and perfection and justice. It is an acknowledgement of your own frailty and weakness and utter dependence and deficiencies. All things exist and hold together by the power of God’s omnipotent Word, and therefore we are all walking and living every moment on the high wire of God’s kindness, suspended over absolute eternity. Your heart trembles to see madmen walk across wires suspended between skyscrapers. Maybe you get sick at the thought of being in outer space or sky diving. But we are all constantly walking the high wire of existence, a hairsbreadth between us and forever. We all live in outer space. It is only God’s merciful will that keeps us from flying off this globe into the darkness. 

But then add to this reality the fact that we have all repudiated, cursed, and defied the One who holds us at every moment. He holds us, giving us every breath, every heartbeat, and we demand our own way. He gives us life and health and every good thing, and we are full of bitterness and complaining. We are held up by His almighty power, and we struggle and kick and curse. In our sinful folly, we demand to be left alone. We try to run away from Him – which means, in our sinful insanity, we are trying to destroy ourselves. Like foolish toddlers on a balcony without a railing, we scream and kick and insist that God let us toddle around by ourselves. God is light, and He is the light of men, the light of all existence. Without Him there is only darkness, complete and absolute darkness. 

It’s often been said that the night before the birth of Christ was the darkest night in the history of the world. And there’s something profoundly true about that. But it’s also true that wherever Christ has not yet come or wherever Christ has been rejected, wherever people insist on continuing in their sins, insist on going their own way, in that place there is still great darkness. Of course, so many people, even Christians, don’t want to talk about the darkness. They only want to talk about the light: grace, love, and joy. Isn’t that what Christmas is about? 

But Jesus Christ, the One whose birth we are celebrating, is the One who came speaking, perhaps more than anyone else in the Bible, about the darkness, about judgment, about Hell. Jesus said the tares are the children of the Wicked One growing in His Kingdom that will be gathered up and thrown into a furnace of fire. Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a great net cast into the sea, and when it is pulled up to the shore, the bad and wicked are separated from the good and cast into a furnace of fire, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus repeatedly warned cities of their reception of Him, saying that their judgment would be worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus said that those without a wedding garment will be cast out of the Marriage Feast, into outer darkness. He said that the one who buries his talent in the ground will have his talent taken away and be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus said those who refuse to cut off hands and pluck out eyes that cause offense will be cast into hell, into fire that is never quenched, where the worm never dies. 

When the Light of the World comes into the world, the first thing you notice is all the darkness. We cannot talk about the birth of the Light of the world, without talking about the darkness of the world, the darkness in our lives. And when we do that, it must cause us to tremble. The King has come, and we have rebelled. The Lord of Glory has appeared, and we have been plotting against Him. There is a kind of fear that He came to banish, and it is the fear that we see in our first parents in the Garden, the kind of fear that tries to hide. But you cannot hide from the Lord of all Light. In His Light everything is manifest: every thought, every word, every glance, every act. All is plain as day to Him. The kind of fear that tries to run away, tries to hide is foolish, fleshly fear of punishment. But godly fear trembles because we have offended our Father’s love. Godly fear falls to the ground in worship because we have not honored our King. Godly fear acknowledges that true justice would mean our destruction. It acknowledges that it would be good and righteous and holy if all sinners were cast into Hell for our insolence. Godly fear wants nothing but the glory of God because He is worthy, because He is the King. Godly fear does not run from the King. Godly fear stumbles toward the King, trembling and full of joy. Even if we perish, it would have been worth it to be so near the King. 

John Bunyan once called godly fear a “blessed confusion.” It’s the confusion of knowing the greatness of God and the frailty of being a creature, the confusion of knowing the goodness and holiness of God and the shameful filth of our own hearts and lives. And in the midst of that confusion, hearing the words, from our Savior Himself, Come. Come and welcome. Come into the feast. Come into the light. And the fear of the Lord drives you in, trembling with joy. Because Christ has come for us. Christ was born for us. All is grace. All is gift. All is Christmas. 

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (Is. 9:2). 

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

On Beheading Satanic Shrines & the Slip-N-Slide of Neutrality

Introduction
So last Thursday, Michael Cassidy, a Christian brother and veteran from Mississippi found himself at the capitol building in Iowa where a satanic shrine was on display, apparently pieced together with foam noodles and bungee cords. Cassidy pulled its head off, which was appropriately stuffed with trash bags, and threw the image down. Being a law-abiding citizen, he immediately turned himself into the capitol security and received their citation. A GiveSendGo campaign was quickly opened for his legal defense, and as of the time of this writing around $74K had been raised in his support. 

In the week leading up to this, a fairly significant outcry had issued over Iowa’s decision to permit such use of public space. Among those defending Iowa lawmakers was evangelical Christian and state representative Jon Dunwell, insisting that while he personally disagreed with what the statue intended to communicate, Christians must not prohibit such displays. In fact, Dunwell insisted that the Satanic shrine was necessary to defend for the sake of “freedom of religious expression.” 

As it happened, I’ve been in the midst of an Advent-Christmas sermon series, and yesterday’s message was titled “Deck Your Idols.” And as I mentioned to my congregation yesterday, I had prepared the sermon before any of this stuff with Michael Cassidy had taken place. But God works in mysterious ways, and make of the timing of all this what you will. I preached from Micah 5 where the prophecy is given that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), and when the Messiah comes, He will save His people, gathering a remnant, and in and through them, God will destroy all witchcraft and idols. The birth of Christ in Bethlehem means the destruction of all idols. 

But It’s Just Spiritual!
However, huffing on cans of secularism for the last century, many Christians have been quick to side with Rep. Dunwell, insisting that Christ only came to destroy idols metaphorically or spiritually deep, deep down in your heart (where?) down in your heart. One X commenter named “Aaroninwriting” wrote: “Smashing statues, no matter how evil and idolatrous they are, is not what the Christian is called to do. There’s a large swath of the church that’s embracing what is an Islamic ethos, because it’s dressed up in Christian garb and wrapped in a flag. The deception that’s currently afoot seems so reasonable, so righteous, but it’s going to end in the judgement of God. This emerging Militant Christian Zeitgeist is not of the Biblical Christ whatsoever.” This fellow was kind enough to label this tendency in his bio with the self-ascribed descriptor “anabaptist.” Which is exactly what this position is. This should be distinguished from regular old “baptists” who may or may not subscribe to this retreatism and Gnosticism. 

I replied to Mr. Aaroninwriting thusly: “Um. Smashing idols is exactly what Christians are called to do. It’s the only thing we’re called to do. Somebody get this guy a Bible.” Followed by: “It’s the only thing we’re called to do —with regard to idols. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away…” (Col. 3:5-8). And a little later to at least one thread, arguing that my Colossians verse could not possibly apply to Mr. Cassidy, I wrote, “While I do not believe there is a direct correspondence between what Gideon did with the idol in his home town and our situation, there is an important lesson and analogy to be applied in our public square, and I think it’s a legitimate application of Colossians 3.”

Jenna Ellis, among others, also lent her voice to objecting to Mr. Cassidy’s actions, arguing that it was a mistake to see God’s commands to Israel to destroy idols applying to any Christian today. Ellis raised the question of whether those defending Mr. Cassidy would also defend someone who beheaded a statue of Allah. Thankfully, 69% answered her poll in the affirmative, and she seemed to think this was proof that “Christian Nationalism” is a subversive movement to undermine our constitutional order, replacing it with “a theocracy, including blasphemy laws and criminalizing other religions and their practice.” While Ellis says she hates such satanic shrines, she believes that Christians are not required to tear it down because the statue has no innate power, is not requiring Christians to disobey God, and because our war is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness. 

From Israel to America
While it is true that Christ teaches that idols begin and must be uprooted primarily from the hearts of men and our personal lives, it is also true that He teaches that external and public actions must often be taken to eradicate them. Plucking out the eye that causes sin and cutting off the hand certainly begins with personal repentance, but does not necessarily end there. On what basis would Rep. Dunwell or Jenna Ellis prohibit a pornographic display at the Iowa State Capitol building? Remember, we are now at the point where the Sisters of Perpetual Perversion are insisting on their “religious right” to publicly display their private parts to little kids in the name of what David French calls the First Amendment.

While Ellis and Michael O’Fallon and others are insisting that this display and others like it are traps for conservative Christians, intending to get them to over-react in violence and so invoke a tyrannical response from the left, I do not think they see how the whole set-up of supposed constitutional neutrality is a trap. Let me grant the point: are there some on the left hoping that some right wing kook will blow up an abortion clinic or assassinate a prominent LGBTQ activist? Absolutely. And let me state clearly: we must not condone, support, or encourage any of those sorts of revolutionary tactics. But that does not mean that all external, public acts are thereby off the table. Calmly beheading a satanic shrine made out of trash bags and pool noodles is not joining the BLM mob, not joining Islamists, or turning our struggle into a “flesh and blood” war or somehow taking matters into our hands.

Was Moses taking matters into his own hands when he broke the golden calf down and ground it to powder? Was Gideon taking matters into his own hands when he tore down the altar in his home town? Was Samuel taking matters into his own hands when he hacked Agag to pieces before Saul and his anabaptist struggle session? The point is that Jesus and the apostles certainly teach that the training of Israel in holy war has its first and primary application in individual piety, familial faithfulness, and church discipline, but it does not and cannot end there. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Christ. Just wars, capital punishment of murderers, and yes, the suppression of false religions and blasphemy are the foundations of Western liberty. Just ask Augustine, King Alfred, John Calvin, or even George Washington.

As Joe Boot said to Jenna Ellis on X, “Madam, you need to read some history. The modern West has only recently repealed Christian blasphemy laws replaced by pagan ones. US states throughout the 20th century started repealing these laws. England in 2008 & Scotland only in 2020. All social orders limit some speech.” In other words, it is certainly true that the specific laws and instructions that God gave to Israel do not apply to modern Americans in a one-to-one way, but the moral principles of those laws and commands certainly do stand and have a public application. Christians have understood this for centuries. 

The point is that there is no such thing as neutrality. This was a wet dream of the Enlightenment, and I mean that pretty much literally. Freud and Marquis De Sade were assisted by Darwin and Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke – in their own ways, to posit a neutral public square that would ultimately allow for freedom of orgasm, which is basically what the First Amendment means to modern Leftists and their deceived conservative acolytes. The problem with the Ellis-O’Fallon powerplay narrative is that it doesn’t go deep enough. Enlightenment secularism was wrong. And this is demonstrated easily by the simple question: by what standard? By what standard would Ellis or O’Fallon or Dunwell prohibit pornography or a sodomite shrine? And appeals to “common sense” or “basic human decency” are really meaningless at this point. Turns out “common sense” and “basic human decency” now require things that the founders of our nation would have never countenanced: from Drag Queens in our libraries to the Sisters of Perpetual Perversion in our baseball parks — sorry your so-called “neutrality” looks an awful lot like a baseball bat coming down on our head. 

The Ellis-O’Fallon-Dunwell position pictures Leftists and Christians in a death struggle on the mountain of civic Justice. In their view, our job is to basically hold still as much as possible while the Leftists jerk and shake and convulse with their revolutionary lusts. In their view, if we respond with anything other than what the Supreme Court has handed down as the current law of the land, we will allow the Leftists to convulse even more and that will lead to loss of Christian freedom and inevitably a stumble further down the mountain of civic justice. The problem with this view is that it imagines that we are playing on relatively neutral ground, as though we both have our feet planted on something solid, even if the Leftists are apoplectic and epileptic. But the so-called “secular experiment” was always a set up. Turns out that the neutral public square is actually a slip-n-slide and just to keep things colorful it’s generously lubed with K-Y Jelly. In other words, the myth of neutrality is a lie, which means it’s immoral and therefore it never could produce true civil justice or religious equality. Ellis and Company think if we only hold still we can preserve some semblance of the “liberal order,” but we’ve been sliding down this mountainside for the last fifty years and no amount of compliance has slowed us down. The answer is to get off the slip-n-slide of neutrality, and start hiking back up the mountain of biblical law. That isn’t tyranny. That’s the only path to real freedom and justice.

Speaking of heads getting cracked, C.S. Lewis wrestled through this very point in the second volume of his Ransom Trilogy. In Perelandra, the hero Ransom experiences a sort of parallel universe version of the original Garden of Eden on the planet Venus with its very own Satanic-tempter, a demon-possessed scientist named Weston who has become the “Un-man.” After reasoning and arguing for many days, Ransom finally concludes that the only way to win this battle will be by literally killing the Un-man. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes—I mean Amen,’ said Ransom, and hurled the stone as hard as he could into the Un-man’s face.” 

Of course, some will say that I’ve just condoned literal violence, and how can I praise this while saying I do not support vigilante violence? I would simply refer you to the founding of America. How were the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, and the War for Independence justified? You cannot celebrate the founding of our nation and then condemn the very same spirit and principles that established our freedom. It was on thoroughly biblical and Christian principles that we refused to submit to tyrannical taxes and the breach of natural law and our covenants with the King of England. And this is because God’s Word always reigns supreme. God’s Word defines and defends true religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and separation of powers – including the separation of church and state. But by that same Biblical standard, there comes a time to topple statues, even the kind crafted out of flotation devices. 

Conclusion
Jenna Ellis claims that civil disobedience is sometimes called for but only when the magistrate is requiring disobedience to God. Now to be clear: I have not claimed nor would I insist that every Christian has a moral duty to physically tear down every symbol of unbelief, like tearing down every pride flag next June – as though you are in sin if you walk by a rainbow flag and fail to deface it. However, I am claiming that what Michael Cassidy did appears to have been nothing but virtuous, and therefore something to be celebrated and emulated. 

Presumably, Ellis and others would say that pornographic displays ought to be prohibited because they pose some kind of immediate threat in a way that a cheesy Halloween display does not. But I beg to differ. Ellis would be right that no one is seriously tempted to convert to “satanism” because of this shrine in Iowa. No, not hardly. But we have all witnessed another seduction taking place actively, and that is the ongoing seduction of secularism. I’m not worried about Iowans turning to the dark demons of the occult just yet (although that is certainly waiting in the wings), but what I am worried about right now is our lawmakers humping our modern goddess of neutrality. The satanic shrine is Enlightenment porn. It’s a Victoria’s Secret display for naïve lawmakers and journalists. 

The Iowan shrine is just another kind of drag queen on display. The seduction isn’t an overtly sexual perversion yet. This is the secular foreplay, grooming our leaders and neighbors to snuggle up to the myth of neutrality and so-called religious equality. But after that comes the sodomy and the pedophilia and the cancel culture. It always does. You cannot celebrate immorality and then somehow preserve justice in the public square. You cannot pull justice out of the hat of neutrality. There is no true justice or equality under the law unless Christ is King. There can be no true religious freedom in human society apart from the Word of God.