Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 13

Glorify God With Your Body

This was a talk I gave for a Logos School Assembly – Life Between the Sexes 2023

Introduction
This is a Christian school, which means that we seek to honor Christ and one another as we study and learn and grow up. This may seem obvious, but it bears stating that apart from knowing Christ, the ways we are trying to honor Christ and one another won’t make sense. So when we have these talks, one foundational question to ask yourself is: do these talks resonate with you? Do you generally want to listen and learn or do they seem like someone speaking a different language, or maybe worse, do they seem offensive or repulsive to you? It says in 2 Cor. 2:16 that the gospel smells like death to those who are dead, but it smells like life to those who are being saved. 

The talk today is about life between the sexes, and I want to hit several practical recommendations, but I want to ground it all in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:18-20). 

You could summarize the Christian teaching on life between the sexes as that first command from the Apostle Paul: Flee fornication. Flee sexual sin. Notice that he doesn’t say, avoid or keep an eye out for. He says “flee.” Flee means to run away, to rush, and generally the word means to run away from danger and to make haste toward a place of safety. 

God Bought Your Body
I want to come back to this in a minute, but first the reasons for running away from the danger of sexual sin. There are two reasons: 1. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in You from God and 2. You are not your own because you were bought with a price. This is why I wanted to begin with the foundation for how we seek to pursue our life together as men and women, male and female. 

Paul says that we must flee fornication because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and they do not belong to us because Christ bought them with His blood. It’s interesting that God bought our bodies. Often we talk about how God saved our souls. That’s certainly true, but this text says that God bought our bodies and fills our bodies with His Spirit. His Spirit is not just in our hearts, not just in our souls, not just in our minds, but also in our material, physical bodies.

But if the Holy Spirit is not in you, and if you don’t know if your body was bought with a price, then the command to flee fornication will seem strange, maybe even repulsive. The world is shouting at you all day long that your body belongs to you. You can do whatever you want with your body, and that if you don’t let your body and its passions rule you, you will be sad, hurt, and unfulfilled. That’s why you have do whatever “feels good.” And some Christians even partially give in to this by imagining that God really only cares about your heart or soul, but not so much about our bodies: why’d you get that tattoo, why’d you dye your hair blue? “I just like it.” Man looks at the appearance, but God looks at the heart, we say, misapplying the verse.

But God created our bodies. He created us body and soul to image Him, male and female in His image, to display His glory. And when we scorned Him, He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our rebellion and His Spirit to fill and sanctify our bodies, so that we can please Him and glorify Him with our bodies. 

Part of the effects of the Fall is the awkwardness and shame we can feel in our bodies. Sometimes there are also various forms of ingratitude or resentment about our bodies and envy or covetousness of others. Rosaria Butterfield has pointed out that transgenderism is fundamentally a radical envy of a completely different body than the one God gave you. For Christians, not only did God give you your body and your neighbor their body, but He also sent His Son to redeem our bodies, to make them holy. This means that they can be used to glorify Him now through obedience (offering our bodies as living sacrifices), and in the resurrection, our bodies will glorify Him perfectly forever. Our obedience is our sacrifice of praise. 

How To Flee Fornication

1. “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13:4). The whole point of courtship is to find a spouse in a way that honors God, marriage, and one another. But treating courtship and the bodies God has given us and our interactions together casually is to dishonor the marriage bed and dishonor Christ. Imagine walking into the White House to meet the president in shorts and flipflops or showing up to a fancy dinner in your sweatpants and an old t-shirt. There’s a kind of thoughtlessness that simply is dishonoring. It’s the same with how you interact with one another. Be thoughtful. Hookup/dating culture is also practicing for fornication and adultery, not fleeing from it. If you’re just flirting, talking about who likes who, who has a crush on who, and serially giving yourself to various people (even just emotionally), you’re playing games with emotions that are meant to be ruled carefully until you’re ready to find a spouse. But revving up those emotions before you’re ready is a great way to practice infidelity. This includes the cheap emotional thrill of gossiping about other people or spreading rumors. 

2. Treat one another as brothers and sisters. Of course there is a difference between your actual brothers and sisters and everyone else, but the point is to be kind, courteous, respectful, but not intimate. You shouldn’t be close with anyone of the opposite sex who isn’t actually family. And be really careful about pretending that you can (e.g. “They’re practically like family!”) It would be incredibly awkward and weird to have romantic thoughts about a brother or sister, and while you’re in junior high and high school, you aren’t ready to get married yet, so don’t pretend you are. Don’t day dream that you are. Don’t imagine that you are. Don’t talk like you are. Don’t spend a lot of time together, don’t privately message one another. Gents, hold doors, seat the ladies, look out for their needs; gals, thank the guys and cheer them on. 

3. “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Eph. 5:4). Crude jokes about body parts or sexual functions are dishonoring to the marriage bed, dishonoring the way God made our bodies, and frequently tend toward being unguarded against sexual temptations. When you make light of the way God made us, instead of being thankful, you’re practicing to be thoughtless, rude, and lustful. Of course, God made our bodies and they are funny in some ways, but if you wouldn’t tell that joke in front of your mom, don’t tell it in front of your friends or on a text thread. This also means not listening to music or watching shows that are full of filthiness. 

4. Lastly, flee fornication and honor the marriage bed by prepare for marriage and family. Work hard at your studies, grow in personal disciplines of holiness and self-control and purity. Read your Bible regularly. Pray regularly. Grow into a mature man or woman of God. Maturity means taking responsibility for yourself and then beginning to serve others. What can you do for yourself and how can you help others? Can you pick up a job? Can you volunteer? Do you see things that need to be done and do them without being told or do you only do those things that are asked of you? Seeing what needs to be done and doing it on your own is maturity, and maturity is thoughtfulness and shows honor and is preparing for marriage.

So flee fornication because Christ is worthy. He has purchased us with His blood and filled us with His Spirit, so that we may glorify God in our bodies. 

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

Blessed Confusion

Psalm 128 is one of our community’s favorite psalms: “Blessed the man who fears Jehovah…” But do you stop and consider that opening line? Blessed is the man who fears Jehovah. It is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10), and especially when it comes to worship, we are required to draw near with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:28-29). 

When John saw Jesus, it says that he fell down at his feet like a dead man (Rev. 1:17). God is described in Scripture like a great and terrible storm of glory and majesty. “The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein” (Nah. 1:4). When Israel met with the Lord at Mt. Sinai, thick smoke and clouds descended on the mountain, full of lightning and thunder, and the whole mountain shook (Ex. 19:16-18). Think of standing in front of a volcano, a tornado, and tidal wave of glory as high as a mountain towering over you. 

Even the presence of angels are described as terrifying. The first words out of the mouths of angels are almost always: “do not be afraid/fear not.” If the messengers of God make people tremble, how much more God Himself? 

God is immense, majestic, and even in His goodness, there is awe and reverence, and the sense that we deserve to die. The fear of God shows us that we are next to nothing compared to Him – dust and ashes compared to Him. And then add to that our sins, and yes, even our forgiven sins, creates what John Bunyan called a “blessed confusion” – deep shame combined with profound relief. 

This is the salt that is to season our entire lives: God’s immense greatness, our miniscule frailty, and His glorious goodness in the face of our filth and rebellion. 

And it is to be particularly evident in our worship. The psalmist says, “rejoice with trembling.” As they sang on the banks of the Red Sea: “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex. 15:11)

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

The Most Vulgar Slur You Can Think Of

On the Necessity of Prophetic Naming

Introduction
This article is a follow up thought on Kevin DeYoung’s piece, but not so much a direct response but a further explanation and defense of at least one part of DeYoung’s objection and concern for the “Moscow Mood.” Likewise, this perhaps serves as a sort of tangential answer to Denny Burk’s recent Sunday School class on Doug Wilson’s use of coarse language. 

The Bible insists that words are powerful. God created the heavens and the earth by the power of His Word, and He upholds all things by the power of that same Word, which is the Lord Jesus Christ (Gen. 1, Col. 1, Heb. 1). Because human beings are made in God’s image and likeness, we are verbal creatures, and our words imitate and mimic His words. We see this immediately in the Garden of Eden when God gave Adam the task of naming the animals (Gen. 2). This was not merely a matter of assigning relatively random or capricious titles to the animals (like “Fred” or “Fido”), but rather something far more scientific, something more profound, related to the taxonomy of creatures, and what they were for. This becomes clear as the result of that labor was concluding that a helper had not been found that was suitable for Adam.

All of this naming culminated in the creation of the first woman from Adam’s side, and when she was brought to the man, he sang a poem over her, and named her “woman” because she was taken from man. The word for “woman” is related to the Hebrew word for “fire,” and indicates that she was created to be the glory of man (cf. 1 Cor. 11). But naming is not merely descriptive; it is also prescriptive and therefore prophetic. After the Fall, Adam re-named his wife “Eve” because she would become the mother of all the living. And notice that Adam names her this in faith believing that they will live and despite the curse of sin, his wife will bear children, including the seed that will crush the seed of the serpent.

Battle of Words
All of this is why words are so powerful and potent. This why Scripture says that “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones” (Prov. 16:24). Likewise, “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health” (Prov. 12:18). “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof” (Prov. 18:21). Words and names give either life or death, sickness or health, and we are always in some sense eating our words and becoming what we say and hear. James famously says that the tongue is a flamethrower, a tiny flame that is able to set whole worlds on fire – even the fires of Hell itself (Js. 3:5-6). And therefore he warns God’s people to guard their words carefully. Our mouths must not be simultaneously full of cursing and blessing, like some kind of foul fountain (Js. 3:9-12). And yet, clearly James does not intend to forbid all cursing, since he also commends the Psalms to be sung (Js. 5:13). 

Many Psalms include curses and imprecations: “Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man” (Ps. 10:15, cf. Ps. 58:6, 69:25). “As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones” (Ps. 109:17-18). And perhaps the most infamous: “Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Ps. 137:9). Evidently, since God’s people are required to sing the Psalms, God’s people are to have these blessings and curses in their mouths so that the Word of Christ may dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16).

Elsewhere, Hosea prays that God will give “whoring” Ephraim “a miscarrying womb and dry breasts” so that they will be bereaved of their children (Hos. 9). And of course Paul warns the Galatians from turning away from the true gospel, saying that if anyone preaches another gospel, let him be anathema, that is, cursed or damned (Gal. 1:8). And if all the church ladies thought that was quite enough, Paul repeats himself in the very next verse: let anyone who preaches another gospel be damned (Gal. 1:9). And we ought to pay careful attention to this curse because it comes in the same letter in which Paul warns Christians about biting and devouring one another with their tongues (Gal. 5:15). Evidently, there is a kind of cursing that is full of love. There is a kind of cursing that is filled with the Holy Spirit, that has crucified the flesh and all of its lusts (Gal. 5:22-25). 

God Himself models this for us: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). And the patriarchs take this same language upon their own lips and pass it down to their children (Gen. 27:19). God proclaims blessings and cursing to Israel, and the people affirm them and say, Amen (Dt. 30). So God speaks blessings and certain kinds of curses that His people are required to affirm and echo. And this imitation of God’s Word is part of our prophetic naming. We are not merely agreeing with God’s assessments, we are announcing in faith what will become of these things. This is an act of dominion and rule. By the authority of God’s Word, we are binding on earth as it is in heaven. God says that the adulterer is already cursed (Prov. 22:14). Homosexuality is not merely the kind of sin that will lead to cursing, death, and destruction, it is itself a terrible curse of suicidal madness (Rom. 1), as is the murder of one’s own children (Dt. 28:28, 53-57).

When the Church speaks officially in excommunication, it is formally pronouncing a curse: handing a hardened sinner over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh (1 Cor. 5:4-5). While God forbids all cursing out of personal animosity and vengeance (Rom. 12:14), there is a kind of cursing that mimics God’s own cursing which foretells the Hellish destruction and agony that has already begun in certain actions. The Church and Christians in general must recover this authoritative naming – both blessing and cursing – speaking God’s words after Him, as acts of dominion and justice. 

At the center of this theology of prophetic cursing is the Cross. But for far too many Christians, the Cross is merely a nice piece of jewelry, an ornate piece of wood in the sanctuary or on the roof of a church building. And it isn’t the God damning curse that Scripture says it is: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them’… Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written ‘Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:10, 13). We read these words and it is easy for them not to be the gut punch they ought to be. Perhaps we conjure up generally “bad” connotations, but not the foul stench of a curse, not the reflexive repulsion of a hateful obscenity. So let your imagination dwell on this for a moment: a man strung up naked, bleeding, defecating, suffocating, screaming in agony. Don’t look away.

And the thing we must not miss is that our God, the God of infinite blessing, also spoke this infinite curse. His Eternal Word became this vile curse. God spoke this revolting curse about our sin. It was a righteous and holy curse, but it was the most offensive obscenity, vulgarity, and blasphemous curse in the history of the world. And that curse has become the salvation of the world. 

The distinctions between slurs, vulgarity, swearing, cursing, and obscenity are important and helpful distinctions, but they all come together in the Cross of Jesus Christ. There we have a blasphemous oath, the fiercest damnation of Hell itself, and the most vulgar obscenity and bigoted slur of the righteous God-man stripped naked and shamefully lynched as a spectacle for all to see. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. 

Conclusions
So this is the center of all prophetic naming. Preachers of the gospel in particular are required by God to proclaim this curse: the filthy fact of our Lord Jesus with stakes driven through His hands and feet hanging from a Roman gibbet for the forgiveness of all our sins. The only One who didn’t deserve to be there, hanging like an animal ready for the butcher, like a stag to be gutted, stripped and shamed like a whore. The Righteous for the unrighteous. 

Certainly words are powerful. And we must not overuse certain potent words and so water them down. And we do not speak curses with any sort of glee or lustful thrill. Some folly we are required to laugh at like our Father in Heaven (Ps. 2), and sometimes wisdom does answer a fool according to his folly (Prov. 26:5) or mock certain superstitious irrationality with a kind of juvenile sarcasm (1 Kgs. 18). But we do not chuckle about real curses. We do not rejoice in the death of the wicked, lest we bring God’s wrath upon ourselves (Job 31:29). But sometimes it is right and proper to name the evil, to pronounce the curse – not because we relish the filth but because more than anything, we want it die and rise again. 

This is why church discipline and excommunication is sometimes the most loving thing: pronouncing the the destruction of the flesh “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). Some churches and elders do not love erring sinners enough to save them by this means. This is why the Cross is at the center of our prophetic cursing and naming. Whatever gets nailed to the Cross, whatever needs to die stays there and is buried in the tomb of our Lord, but whatever God wills to save will be raised to eternal, indestructible life. The prophetic task sometimes includes the naming of filth out loud in order for Jesus Christ to be evidently set forth as crucified (Gal. 3:1).

So when Pastor Wilson named what Nadia Bolz-Weber did with a bunch of purity rings, this was no junior high coarse jesting, which is clearly prohibited by Scripture (Eph. 5:4). It was rather a prophetic naming. The goal is for that kind of objectification and destruction of women made in the image of the living God – for that sin to be shamed, humiliated, and repudiated for the vulgar obscenity that it is, so that women everywhere may experience salvation, honor, and real love in Christ. 

Another example occurs to me: Given how unborn babies are being mixed up in test tubes, frozen in labs, discarded down drains, bought and sold to the highest bidders, and wombs are being rented, before ripping children from their biological parents (if they somehow manage to escape being poisoned, beheaded, and dismembered in the middle passage of pregnancy), America has collectively said that human babies are nothing more than niggers. 

And why would a Christian minister, knowing the offense of that word, dare name what we do to our children by the millions by that name? Certainly not for kicks. Not for some kind of cheap thrill, or even for the accolades of five belligerent white-supremacists. No, the only good reason would be in the real hope that maybe it would be the kind of truthful offense that would prick consciences and bring a righteous shame and anger on our land – so that all our hatred of the image of God would be crucified and all human life would be cherished and honored. 

Rolling Stone magazine recently ran an article on the so-called empowerment of using the c-word, and it was interesting to note that some folks have apparently noticed that the increasing offense of vulgar obscenities (f-word, c-word, etc.) has roughly corresponded with an overall decrease in societal offense of profanity and blasphemy (e.g. using the Lord’s name in vain). And whatever the evidence they may cite to back up that assertion, the claim rings true: Christians have put up with the casual dishonor of the name of the Most High God, and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ in particular. But if you write or say certain sexual or ethnic slurs, you have committed the unforgiveable sin. But this tells us who we really fear. It tells us what we really worship. The deepest offense in our vocabulary is against man, against their skin, against their sexuality and dignity. But while men certainly can and do hate and abuse one another in truly despicable ways, our deepest offense is against our Maker, our Savior, the Triune God of Heaven. 

Take all the bad words you can think of, the worst words in every human language, list them all out, with no blanks, no asterisks, now stand on a street corner and yell them with all the vitriol you can manage. And you still haven’t even come close to the obscenity and coarseness of our Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross. And He hung there for the sins our land, for all the hate and vitriol, for all the murder and violence, for every lustful thought or glance, for our all bitterness and envy. He hung there so that by that curse, we might be set free and come under His blessing. So don’t look away. This too is central to the “Moscow Mood,” and this is how we win.

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

Why We Worship the Way We Do

Why do we worship the way we do? One way to answer this question is by noticing the texts in the New Testament that urge us to offer our bodies and our praises as sacrifices: We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1). When we walk in love toward one another, it’s a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph. 5:2). When we give offerings and gifts to the work of ministry, it’s a sacrifice, acceptable and pleasing to God (Phil. 4:18). When we acknowledge God and do good and share with one another, these are sacrifices of praise, pleasing to God (Heb. 13:15-16). We are being built up into a spiritual house together in the church, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 2:5). 

But once we establish this point that New Covenant worship is to be full of these kinds of spiritual sacrifices of praise, we realize that the Old Covenant sacrifices were our training wheels. They were previews of the final bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, but they were also tutors or teachers, preparing us to offer what God truly always wanted: broken and soft hearts, lips of praise and thanksgiving, joyful fellowship, and wholly consecrated lives. 

And that is what we find in the three principle Old Testament sacrifices: a sin offering focused on cleansing from sin, a whole burnt ascension offering – focused on a wholly consecrated life arising to God as sweet smelling aroma, and a peace offering, where the worshipers ate and fellowshipped in the presence of God. And wherever we find those three sacrifices together, they are always offered in that order: sin offering, whole burnt ascension offering, and peace offering. 

If you add a Call to Worship to the beginning and a benediction at the end, we find this same basic pattern of Christian worship throughout the history of the Church: we are called into the presence of God, we confess our sins, we hear the Word read and preached, consecrating our entire lives to Him, we sit down for communion in His presence, and then we are sent out with His blessing. Why do we worship this way? Because we are holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

The Politics of Christmas

Advent Grab Bag #1

Opening Prayer: Our Father, our land has strayed far from You, and this is because we have rejected Your Christ. For too long, we have pretended that we can have freedom and justice without Your Son, and so we have wondered into a far off country and we have squandered Your inheritance. But we are gathered here this morning before Your Word, asking You to speak to us the Word of Truth, the Word of true liberation, so that our nation may come to its senses and return to You and all the nations of the world may know that You are the living God and there is no other. We are asking for a great revival and reformation in this land, and we are asking for it in the great name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 

Introduction 
As is our custom in Advent, we began using the Definition of Chalcedon this morning for our Creed, which was adopted and published in 451 A.D. The purpose of the Definition was to further defend the full divinity and humanity of Christ from several heresies, while preserving the Creator-creature distinction. 

All non-Christian societies are fundamentally what Peter Jones calls “oneist.” Oneism teaches that everything is essentially one, part of the same basic substance, and therefore oneism is pantheistic. Christianity is the lone religion in the world that teaches “twoism,” that there are fundamentally two different realities: God and everything else. This has profound implications for all of life, including how we think about politics and power. 

The Texts: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. 1:21-23).

“Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end” (Ps. 102:25-27). 

“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

Summary of the Texts
The center of human rebellion is the refusal to acknowledge God as He truly is and that is “uncorruptible” and utterly unlike anything in creation, all of which is “corruptible,” and refusing to be thankful for this reality, people become foolish idolaters (Rom. 1:21-23). Likewise, Psalm 102 describes God as the Creator of all things in heaven and on earth, and the difference between the Creator and His creation is that creation perishes, wears out, and changes, but the Creator endures, remains the same, and has no end (Ps. 102:25-27). Finally, the Bible says there is only one God and one mediator between God and man: Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5). 

The Councils & Heresies
Leading up to the Council of Nicaea in 325, a pastor named Arius taught that Jesus was not fully God, but rather was a man who was very much like God. Arius taught that there was “a time” (so to speak) when the Son was not. He said, the Son had a beginning. However, Athanasius and others argued that Christ was fully God and was therefore of the “same substance” with the Father (“homoousias”). The later Arians would say that Christ had a “similar substance” with the Father (“homoiousias”). This really is a watershed issue. If Jesus is merely the highest created being, the most exalted creature, right next to God, then the Creator-creature divide has collapsed in principle. Instead of the infinite chasm between God and His creation that the Bible teaches, there is a ladder, a hierarchy or gradation of “being” that may ascend to Godhead. 

The Council of Nicaea concluded that Athanasius was correct and published the Nicene Creed which affirms that Christ is fully God and fully man, eternally begotten, “not made,” and of the same substance with the Father. The Council of Chalcedon came along in 451 and further nailed the coffin shut on Arianism (and other Christological heresies), insisting that the Divine and human natures come together in Christ “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” While this might seem esoteric or pedantic, it really is glorious. It is saying that the Creator-creation distinction remains intact even in the one mediator between God and man. The divine and human natures do not blend or merge or mix even in the one mediator, Jesus Christ. There is no hierarchy of being ascending and merging into God. There is only God and everything else, and Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and everything else, and in His person, those two natures are united “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union.”

Chalcedonian Politics
The political ramifications for this are enormous. The tendency of all cultures dedicated to “oneism” is toward the Tower of Babel: consolidating global resources and power in an effort to ascend to Heaven, whether literally or simply by achieving heaven/utopia. This process always includes leaders claiming the authority of God/gods. In the ancient world, Pharaoh was the human representative of the sun god, Ra, and in Rome, Caesar was hailed as the divine “lord” and son of god (Jupiter). When the early Christians acclaimed Jesus as “Lord” and “Son of God,” this was in direct defiance of the emperor cult. Later, when the Roman Pope claimed to be the universal pontiff and “Vicar of Christ,” and exercised massive political power, it was somewhat based on the supposed authority to change bread and wine into the flesh and blood of God. The Creator-creature distinction was beginning to collapse even in the Church. Abusive political power has always been exercised under the guise of unlimited divine power. But the Biblical religion has always insisted that all authority comes from God and is therefore “under God” and limited by God and His Word. While modern governments have not yet had the audacity to openly claim this divinity, this hasn’t stopped them from acting like it in their totalitarian claims on our property, income, children, and healthcare. 

Applications
What we are celebrating at Christmas is not only our eternal salvation but also freedom from every kind of tyranny, beginning with death itself, but also sin, the Devil, and all Satanic manipulation, oppression, and power grabs. The state is not God, nor is it the mediator between God and man. And no one can ascend to God or Heaven. The One born in Bethlehem, He is the eternal Son of God, the Lord and only mediator between God and Man. All earthly authorities answer to Him. Christmas means limited government. 

And this is why the Kingdom goes forth as proclamation, baptism, communion, and worship — not coercion. There is nothing that we can do to ascend to God in Heaven or make heaven on earth by our own wisdom, power, or enlightenment. There is no way for us to cross that chasm, and our sin only makes the distance greater. Only God can come to us. Only God can cross the chasm. And so He has in Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man. This is why salvation is all grace.

Prayer: Almighty God, teach us to rest in this reality, this grace, and to build cultures of freedom and grace in our families, churches, and in our nation, because You have come for us. And so we pray, as Jesus taught us, singing… 

The Hole in Kevin DeYoung’s Holiness

Introduction
I’ve appreciated Kevin DeYoung’s work. He’s taken faithful stands on homosexuality, biblical repentance, and Christian holiness. I attended a regional talk he gave one time and remember being encouraged by it. If I remember correctly it was connected to his book The Hole in our Holiness. And now DeYoung has written a thoughtful engagement with the Moscow Project, specifically trying to answer the question of what he thinks of Douglas Wilson.

Of course, I’m nothing close to an objective, outside observer. I moved to Moscow as a 17 year old punk kid, went to New St. Andrews College, slowly picked my way through Greyfriars Hall, left for two years to go to Erskine Theological Seminary, and then landed back in Moscow pastoring Trinity Reformed Church for ten years before serving alongside Pastor Wilson as an associate pastor for three years and then helping Christ Church launch a new church plant called King’s Cross Church that I continue to pastor. My ties with Pastor Wilson are deep. He still serves as a pro tem elder on my session (and I on his session), and there is only one office between his and mine, occupied by Jared Longshore. And we’re all thick as thieves.  

I Have Thoughts
But I have thoughts about DeYoung’s article, and I’m going to share them with the world. But first DeYoung’s conclusion: for all of Doug’s helpful contributions to cultural engagement and the attractiveness of his “angular, muscular, forthright Christianity in an age of compromise,” DeYoung is concerned that Doug’s defiant, militant “mood” is “too often incompatible with Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project.”

As I stated on social media when I shared DeYoung’s article, “A good-hearted critique that puts its finger on something very crucial but can’t see the strategic importance and biblical necessity of it. Worth considering, and if you share similar questions or concerns, we have answers.”

And at least a few people asked what I meant. What is the strategic importance and biblical necessity of the “Moscow mood?” First, what is that mood? DeYoung summarizes it quite well: “It’s a mood that says, “We are not giving up, and we are not giving in. We can do better than negotiate the terms of our surrender. The infidels have taken over our Christian laws, our Christian heritage, and our Christian lands, and we are coming to take them back.”

This is quite right, and it is of strategic importance and a biblical necessity. And what do I mean? What is strategic and necessary and why? I mean that the Moscow mood of not giving up, not giving in, and determining to fight for a Christ-honoring culture is strategic and necessary because it is central to a healthy and thriving biblical immune system. Our culture, the Christian West (what is left of it), is in the last gasping hours of a Stage 4 terminal cancer. Secularism has metastasized, and it’s in all our organs and lymph nodes. You can tell because after chopping up millions of unborn babies for more than 50 years, we decided to start chopping off the body parts of our children and chemically castrating them. We are well on our way, as a culture, to making the Aztecs look civilized. We’ve sent groomers into libraries and elementary schools, and we have Christians insisting that this is the cost of a free republic. We have Christians insisting that if we don’t sacrifice to Baal, we won’t get any rain. Some of our most stalwart Christian men cower before the glare of Rachel Denhollender, and only occasionally peer out from behind the skirts of Megan Basham and Rosaria Butterfield. 

There are good answers to all of Kevin DeYoung’s concerns, and Joe Rigney has done a marvelous job giving them. But the central point I want to make is not that Moscow is perfect, is not that we have always done everything right (we haven’t), but the central thing is that God in His grace has given us a biblical immune system. We fight sin. We fight wolves. And we fight brothers (and sisters) who are trying to get us to play footsie with the wolves (but enough about Rachel Denhollender). And yes, we’re eager, and we’re joyful about it. We sing Psalms in four part harmonies while we mock the prophets of Baal and the schoolmarm Pharisees of our day, just like Jesus did and all of the faithful prophets. 

Not Pugnacious Enough
DeYoung seems to have some appreciation for that sentiment in the abstract, but then when he sees it in action, he’s concerned that it’s too worldly, too pugnacious, and too irreverent. Joe Rigney has already answered the concerns about worldliness, as did Pastor Wilson on CrossPolitic, so I will (mostly) leave that charge to the side. But I can barely think of a more blinkered concern in our day. Sure, we must not be jerks; and the fruit of the Spirit must be vibrant in all that we do and say. But I’m sorry: too pugnacious when the forces of globalistic sexual fascism are surrounding us and gunning for our children? No, if anything, we are not pugnacious enough. We are not fierce enough. And too irreverent? If only we could topple more idols. If only we had more sarcasm for the Goliaths that taunt the armies of the living God. Seems like we have a few dozen giants at this point, and most of Israel is cowering in their tents. When the prophet told the king to strike the earth, he only struck it three times, and DeYoung is concerned about that. He’s concerned about David’s tone with Goliath. But we should be striking the ground five or six times so that the world may know that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And I can hear some first year seminary student piping up, “But they will know us by our love, Sumpter!” To which I reply, ‘quite right, and true love fights evil.’

DeYoung objects to Pastor Wilson’s jabs at the ERLC and G3: “This isn’t Wilson using his famous “serrated edge” to make a prophetic point against a godless culture. This is intentionally making fun of other Christians for a quick chuckle.” Actually, DeYoung is simply wrong here. These are exhibits of godless culture seeping (more or less) into Christian circles. As others have pointed out, the ERLC needs to be lampooned out of business, and the fact that DeYoung wants to run interference for them is frankly a bit astonishing. The G3 guys are our friends and doing some good work, but they are far too concerned about their reputation and what internet karens think. When CrossPolitic was invited to do a liveshow at G3 in 2020, and we announced that Doug Wilson would be our guest, the G3 leadership insisted that he not be our guest, or that we only interview him in a back corner of their exhibit hall. But lest anyone think we were offended (we weren’t and had a grand time anyway), we followed that up with an invitation for Josh Buice to be our main speaker at New St. Andrew’s high school worldview summer camp. And major kudos to him, he actually came. But since then, Scott Aniol wasn’t allowed to come hang out with us for our Christian Nationalism liveshow at the Ark Encounter. It might have been too close an association with Ken Ham, but we have our suspicions. 

DeYoung claims that “Moscow cannot become the American Redoubt for conservative Christians if it is too similar to other places, with basically the same kinds of churches, schools, and institutions found in hundreds of other cities. Differentiation is key, and this can only be sustained by a mood of antagonism and sharp antithesis.” He’s wrong that we care very much about being “too similar to other places, with basically the same kinds of churches, schools, and institutions.” Heh. That’s actually pretty funny. Pastor Wilson helped start Logos School and the ACCS and the CREC all of which have literally helped start and encourage hundreds of other classical Christian schools and churches that are similar to us (and different).

But DeYoung is correct that we care about a certain kind of differentiation. We care about the kind of emotionally mature differentiation that isn’t bound to the careening feelings of the culture or unstable brothers. This is why we’ve taken so much heat over our rejection of untethered empathy. We do have a strong mood of antagonism to being steered by vague “concerns,” you know, the concerns that one of your friends heard about from their mom who was talking to a friend in another church who heard that someone’s pet chihuahua was offended. We certainly have cultivated a sharp antithesis to the world, the flesh, and the devil. And we want to be the kinds of friends who call one another out. And to be clear, this is the kind of community we have. It is not unusual to raise concerns within our community. It is not unusual for people to have differences of opinion. We have remarkable like-mindedness, remarkable unity, and yet we are self-consciously seeking to cultivate true Christian individuality, and we refuse to be what Edwin Friedman calls “emotionally fused” to everyone around us. But this is true friendship and leadership, true Christian community, with faithful wounds, and we are on record of happily hanging with anyone from G3 to Founders to Desiring God to Kevin DeYoung, with open invitations to a number of our most vehement detractors.

In a similar vein DeYoung sounds the alarm, saying, “Once [Wilson] wrote that a committee was “as stacked as Dolly Parton after her new implants.” There is no excuse for this language. To be sure, the prophet Ezekiel could use extreme language in extreme situations to show the ugliness of extreme wickedness. Likening a study committee of a confessionally Reformed denomination to Dolly Parton’s anatomy is none of these things. It’s juvenile, sensuous, and entirely without biblical warrant. This isn’t using graphic language to highlight the horror of sin; it’s a bawdy way to make fun of a group of orthodox churchmen with whom Wilson disagrees.”

But this is right to the point. DeYoung is correct that if Wilson is merely using graphic language to mock orthodox churchman with whom he disagrees, that would be completely inexcusable. Period. Full stop. And I would join DeYoung at the front of the line if that’s what that was. But click on that link. Read the whole article. That article is not at all juvenile, sensuous, and the full context more than provides the biblical warrant for such a description. The whole point of the article was to point out the mass hypocrisy and travesty of justice being carried out by a PCA presbytery. The whole point is to call into question their orthodoxy. Read the article. Follow the links. He used extreme language in an extreme situation to call out an extreme wickedness.

And remember this: at the very center of our faith is a presbytery meeting that was called to order, a motion made, with an orderly second and no further discussion, passed without objection, and it was all entered into the minutes neat and tidy to crucify the Son of God. The gospel teaches us, if nothing else, that the good guys are sometimes the bad guys. If Jesus could tell the Apostle Peter to get behind Him, “Satan,” then sometimes, faithful men of God will need to tell otherwise faithful men of God to stop acting like the Devil. And if they’re acting like the Devil, sometimes the kindest way to try to wake them up is to mock all the socks they’ve stuffed into their Presbyterian bra.   

Conclusion
DeYoung summarizes his concern: “I fear that much of the appeal of Moscow is an appeal to what is worldly in us. As we’ve seen, the mood is often irreverent, rebellious, and full of devil-may-care playground taunts. That doesn’t make us better Christians.” Well, to this I would simply say that DeYoung should spend more time in the prophets. Of course, there is a kind of callousness that is utterly unchristian, but when the Titanic is sinking, this is no time for niceties and platitudes. The PCA has teetered on the edge of embracing REVOICE, barely managing to make it a relatively uncomfortable place for Greg Johnson, and three cheers for all the faithful men who did that. But after a hundred years of losing our denominations, colleges, and seminaries, you’d think some folks might realize that what we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. 

DeYoung suggests that Wilson be more like Al Mohler: “He could try to be an evangelical statesman or lean into his role as a seasoned mentor to younger Christians—especially men who don’t need permission to be brawlers, as much as they need a godly role model to emulate and a spiritual father to correct their youthful excesses.” But Al Mohler, for all the wonderful good he has done (and there is a great deal to praise), has not kept the woke virus out of Southern Seminary and he submitted to the worldly zeitgeist of face masks… oh wait, just like DeYoung’s church through September of 2021. 

Look, I’m not saying we did COVID perfectly here in Moscow. We closed down worship and went online for three weeks, and we should not have. We conducted drive-in services for another three weeks, and we should not have. We waivered for a moment. But we learned our lesson. Never again. Not like that. Too much is at stake. Pastor Wilson is not the mentor many want, but he is the mentor that we need. He is the godly role model we need to emulate, the spiritual father that has and will correct our youthful excesses. But jolly fighting of sin and worldliness isn’t one of them. We need more of that mood.

At the end of Joshua, when the land was being settled, the nine and half tribes on the other side of the Jordan got wind of an altar being built by Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, and Phinehas and the whole congregation of Israel gathered themselves together at Shiloh and marched to war (Josh. 22:11-12). Of course when they arrived, they found out that the altar was only an altar of witness and not an altar to a false god, and so the nine and a half tribes called off the war and went home satisfied. Surely there were a few editorials in the Israelite Gazette cautioning everyone about Phinehas’s “Warrior Children” and the long term consequences of that pugnacity. And maybe the editorials got to some of them, as the book of Judges seems to suggest.

There’s tons more to the Moscow mood – things like folk dancing, block parties with Psalm singing, football and lacrosse, reading Narnia and Lord of the Rings over and over, Sabbath feasts, making love, and writing poetry – but yes, also this zealous martial spirit. It is strategically significant and biblically necessary for our children and our children’s children, that we might not forget how to war (Jdg. 3:2). It’s not incompatible with Christian virtue; it is one of the necessary Christian virtues. It is not inconsiderate of other Christians; understood rightly, it is the most considerate of Christian virtues. In Book 1 of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Saint George is the Red Cross Knight of Holiness. And what he learns through his many adventures and trials is that the life of Christian holiness is one of constant war.

Photo by UX Gun on Unsplash

Alpha & Omega

In Rev. 1:17, Jesus says, “Fear not; I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.”

Every week, you hear the words of institution, where Jesus said that this meal, and the wine in particular, is the new testament or new covenant in His blood. This means that every Lord’s Day we are renewing or reaffirming the new covenant. This is the promise of God not to hold our sins against us for the sake of the blood of Christ. Here is God’s solemn oath in the blood of His own Son: your sins are forgiven. As far as the east is from the west, He has removed your sins from you.

This means you can always start over. 

This is also why Jesus is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and last. On the one hand, this is His Sovereign power to bring you through. He holds the beginning and the end, the beginning of your trials and trouble and the end of them all. When you go through challenges and difficulties, if you are in Christ, you are always going through them with Christ. If He is the beginning and the end, then He is there in the middle of every moment. 

But He is there in a particular kind of way: He is with us as the beginning and the end. He is the end of all our sin, all our suffering, and He is the beginning of eternal life, endless glory, Heaven itself.

So when you come to Him, You come to Him as the One who is constantly making an end of those things which must end and constantly making a new beginning. And this means you are not stuck in a rut. You are not stuck in the past. You are not trapped in a moment. Your past does not define you. Your sin does not confine you. Your family, your history, your parents, your choices, any more than anything in the future – if you are in Christ, You have come the Lord of history, the Alpha and Omega, first and the last, the beginning and the end. So as Christ said to John, I say to you: fear not. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.  

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

Holidays & Militant Contentment

Phil. 4:9-13

[The video for this message may be found here.]

Introduction
Holidays are challenging times for many reasons: routines are off, people in our houses, being in other peoples’ houses, challenging people, missing loved ones, or the things that aren’t right or good, and simmering beneath it all, you’re a corrupt sinner. Sometimes another contributing factor is the contrast of really good things and really hard things at the same time in different ways that tempts us to discontent, anxiety, frustrations, bitterness, or despair. But this text teaches us that Christ gives the strong gifts of contentment, peace, and joy for these challenging times as He teaches you to rest in Your Father. 

The Text: “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you…” (Phil. 4:9-13).

Summary of the Text
The overarching exhortation is to stand fast in the Lord and to have peace both in our hearts and minds and as well as with one another (Phil. 4:1-2, 7), and this continues with the exhortation to follow Paul’s apostolic example, with the promise that God’s peace will accompany that imitation (Phil. 4:9). Paul follows his own counsel to rejoice in the Lord, specifically for the recent gift he has received from the Philippians, knowing that it was something they were eager to do but hadn’t had the opportunity until then (Phil. 4:10). Paul clarifies that he wasn’t in a bad way without their gift since he had learned to be content in every circumstance (Phil. 4:11). He had learned to be poor and rich, full and hungry, abound and suffer need because He had the power to fulfill all of his duty through the strength of Christ (Phil. 4:12-13). 

Godly Imitation
We noted last week that prayer with thanksgiving is a crucial part of dealing with anxiety (Phil. 4:6), as well as making lists of all the true, just, pure, and lovely things (Phil. 4:8). But you should add to this arsenal following the examples of other faithful Christians, beginning with Christ Himself: “For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21, Mt. 16:24). But one of the ways we do that is by following those who are following Him well: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1Cor. 11:1). We follow Paul and all of the apostles well as we study the New Testament in particular. But the New Testament also points us to the example of the Old Testament: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11, Heb. 11). The scriptures teach us how to imitate those who have followed God the best and give us great encouragement and hope (Rom. 15:4). We are also instructed to imitate faithful pastors and elders (Heb. 13:7). We do not trust in men, but if we trust in God, we can see His Spirit at work in His people, and there is great encouragement as we all pull in the same direction toward Christ (like in athletics). 

Militant Contentment
Part of the example we need to follow is Paul’s contentment. Notice that he is extremely grateful for the gift he’s received from the Philippians, but he hastens to add that he wasn’t desperate for it. This is a hard line to walk: presenting requests and rejoicing greatly in their fulfillment but also complete surrender to the will of God because He knows best – rejoicing in the Lord always, even when He says “no” or “not yet.” This is only possible through deep faith in the goodness of God our Father. Jesus reveals this to us clearly: Our heavenly Father feeds the birds, and we are more important than birds (Mt. 6:26). Our heavenly Father clothes the grass, and we are more valuable than grass (Mt. 6:30). Our Father knows all of our needs (Mt. 6:32), He is a more faithful Father than any earthly father (Mt. 7:11), and no good thing does He withhold from His people (Ps. 84:11). He who gave His own Son, will give us everything we need (Rom. 8:32). This means that when God says “no” or “not yet” it is better for us and better for the Kingdom (cf. Mt. 6:33). This is why we rejoice always. This is why Jesus prayed in His greatest agony, “not my will, by Thy will be done” (Mt. 26:39). And by submitting to the Father, Jesus crushed sin, death, and the devil and saved the world (1 Pet. 2:23-25). This is not apathy; this is militant contentment. Contentment makes us faithful servants, ready soldiers, and grants us maximum mobility for our King. 

The Strength of Christ
While this Christian calendar verse about “doing all things through Christ” is often misquoted and misapplied (as though it applies to absolutely anything you want to do), it is a gloriously comforting verse. It means that Christ gives the strength we need to do whatever He requires. He gives us the strength to resist temptation, and He always makes a way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13). He gives us the strength to obey: God works in us both the will and the power to please Him (Phil. 2:13). Christ Himself is our mighty armor in enduring suffering (1 Pet. 4:1). And what is it exactly that we arm ourselves with? The justice of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:19-20, cf. 1 Pet. 2:23). When Jesus entrusted Himself to the One who judges justly, God raised Him from the dead. Arm yourself with that certain hope.

Applications
Wise imitation vs. slavish imitation: We are seeking to cultivate a community of “like-mindedness” so that we might have that peace of God that accompanies faithful examples to follow. This Christian like-mindedness isn’t woodenly rigid, inflexible, or disproportionate. We want to major on the majors and minor on the minors, extending true liberty without being naïve (Rom. 14, Gal. 2). Christian like-mindedness is truly a gift from the God of patience and consolation (Rom. 15:5). It comes from the consolations of Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit (Phil. 2:1), and it consists of having the same love, one soul/spirit, and one mind (Phil. 2:2). How can we tell the difference between Christian like-mindedness and slavish legalism? “The fear of man is a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.” (Prov. 29:25). True Christian like-mindedness is driven by peace and consolation; cultic uniformity is driven by fear of what everyone thinks/doing it right/etc. So surround yourself with faithful witnesses, but keep your eyes fixed on Jesus (Heb. 12:1-2). 

Meditate on Heaven: You know the old saying about the fellow who was so heavenly minded, he was no earthly good, but I think that cautionary tale is almost entirely misguided and false. To be truly heavenly minded is to maximize your earthly good. The problem isn’t with people thinking about Heaven too much, the problem is with people mistaking their idols and idolatrous delusions for Heaven. But the true Heaven, where Jesus is seated at the Father’s right hand is what arms us for faithfulness here. “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God… Mortify therefore your members…” (Col. 3:1-5). Setting your affections on Christ in Heaven assures you of the goodness of Your Father and gives you the kind of contentment that is strong and ready to serve the King.

Photo by Eduard Delputte on Unsplash

The Pride of Women

We often (and rightly) warn about the pride of men. But we do not hear so much about the pride of women. And this is not because women have no pride. This is for at least two reasons: first, in many evangelical churches there is a subtle but deep commitment to not addressing the sins of women because that might make them upset. We reject that since we believe that women are sinners in need of salvation just as much as men. But second, since the glory of women is their beauty, they tend to be far more subtle in their pride. It certainly can turn into blatant and ostentatious boasting, but naturally, it tends to be far more devious and deceitful with women and girls. 

Speaking of the pride of the women of Israel, the prophet Amos calls them “cows of Bashan,” crushing the poor and needy while calling for their husbands to bring them another drink (Amos 4:1). The pride of women is often covered over with beauty, with flattery, with dresses and makeup, with sweet sounding words. So how can you recognize this feminine variety of pride? Let me give you two suggestions: first, be on the lookout for a critical spirit and cattiness, whether out loud or in your head or with your friends. Biting words are like knives that stab, and they frequently come from a place of pride, feeling threatened, or a fleshly sense of competition. But Christ is your peace and your joy; Christ is your Defender and your Fortress.

Finally, watch out for vanity: obsessing over the state of your body, the state of your home, your meals, your wardrobe. Your glory is your beauty, but you must always remember that Christian beauty flows out of a gentle and quiet spirit before God, not a panicked, anxious spirit obsessed with what others think. A gentle and quiet spirit is of great price in the sight of God.

Ladies, your job is to get God’s attention first and foremost. Dress for Him, adorn for Him, be thoughtful of Him, and when you do that, you and your home will be altogether lovely, but you’ll also begin to realize that He cares about different details than you can usually see on Pinterest.

Photo by Stephan Seeber on Unsplash

Thanksgiving 2023: Gratitude for the Bible, Creation, and #SpankingGate

Introduction
“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools…” (Rom. 1:21-22).

The center of our American problem is ingratitude. We are a nation that has been exceedingly blessed by the God of Heaven, and while there have been many who returned thanks for His gifts, we have progressively refused to be thankful. It’s a glorious testimony to the Christian founding of our nation, that we celebrate Thanksgiving every year. But it also stands as a memorial, both reminding us of what we ought to do but in many ways testifying against us for what we refuse to do. 

The results of our ingratitude are all around us. The warning of Romans 1 is that those who refuse to glorify God as God will become vain in their imaginations, their foolish hearts will be darkened, and professing themselves to be wise, will become utter fools. And if you keep reading, the Bible says that this leads to serving the creation rather than the Creator and that leads directly to sexual rebellion and insanity. Why do we have PRIDE parades in our streets? Why are the Drag Queens in our libraries? Why are children being targeted with chemical castration and mastectomies? The Bible says that the root cause is our ingratitude, our refusal to give God thanks.  

Gratitude for the Bible
But we need to press this into the corners. It is not merely a generic acknowledgement of God, a generic thanks for the things we think are good – although that is a very good start (we should encourage this bare minimum wherever we can). But the will of God in Christ Jesus is that we would give thanks for all things (1 Thess. 5:18). When a people are in the process of replacing the Creator with parts of creation, it doesn’t usually happen all at once. There is usually a long period of syncretism, mixing idolatry with true religion, acknowledging the God of Heaven in some respects, while serving the gods of Mammon, scientism, and sex. We see tons of this to varying degrees inside and outside the church. Outside the church, this is the generic God-bless-America civil religion that pays homage to “God” but doesn’t know this God and in all other respects is wise in its own eyes, doing whatever seems right and good to themselves, without actually seeking God’s wisdom in His Word. Inside the church, we have people paying lip service to Christ and the Bible, but they have begun to serve their feelings, their experiences, and whatever the latest pseudoscientific studies say. The Bible is not God’s authoritative Word. It is merely a collection of wise thoughts and inspiring stories. But this is a refusal to acknowledge God as God, and a refusal to give thanks for one of His central gifts: His Word in the Bible. If you are grateful to the living God, then at the top of your list must be His Word. He is not a distant god. As Francis Shaffer said decades ago, He is there and He is not silent. If you are thankful, feast on His Word.

Gratitude for Genesis 1
This gratitude is not only for the Word of God in general, the whole Bible, it is for the details of God’s Word. In the name of being respectable, in the name of pseudoscience, Christians have cowered before the high priests of modern paganism and denied what the Bible clearly teaches about the origins of this universe. Darwinism and all its ugly offspring are attempts (even if unintentional) to separate God from His creation, to create distance, and in so doing, diminish the praise and thanksgiving. If God merely set off a “Big Bang,” if God vaguely orchestrated natural processes over billions of years, then our gratitude for creation is reduced. “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Ps. 100:3-4). How do we enter into God’s gates with the kind of thanksgiving that God loves? How do we properly bless His name? When we acknowledge that the Lord is God and He made us, not we ourselves, and not natural processes over millions of years. The gratitude that we need as a nation is gratitude for God’s immediate creation of all things in six days, and all very good. 

Gratitude for Children 
One last item for today: we must repent of our ingratitude for the gift of children and the grace of raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Some of you are aware of the recent hubbub surrounding the viral clip of Mrs. Nancy Wilson describing a moment of discipline from some 40 years ago, teaching her daughter Rachel to be joyful when her mother picked her up from a friend’s house. You can find out more here and here. The venomous reaction to that clip has revealed quite clearly the state of our hearts as a nation. We not only murder our children by the millions in abortion, but with blood all over our hands and faces, we arrogantly claim that we know how to best raise children. Professing ourselves to be wise, we have become utter fools. Our families are more fractured and seething with bitterness and resentment and violence than ever, and we have the audacity to scream at a faithful mother in Israel whose children and grandchildren are thriving. 

Have some Christians mistreated their children? Yes. Have some Christians defended their angry outbursts and violence with Bible verses? Yes, they have. But the disobedience of some does not justify the disobedience of all. Have any psychotherapists ever abused their positions of authority? Have any psychiatrists or psychologists ever given poor advice? Heh. The questions answer themselves. Real reformation will begin when the Church clearly teaches that children are an inestimable blessing from the Lord that Christians families should be grateful to welcome, and that when we have received them, we teach them, train them, discipline them, and raise them in the love of Christ, which includes gracious, judicious corporal punishment. And all of this is a glorious grace. Are you grateful for that? Are you grateful for the tools God has given to train the hearts of little children, to show them true love, and save their souls from death? Calling spanking “violence” or “abuse” or “rape culture” is a supreme act of ingratitude and only adds to the darkness and folly in our hearts.

Gratitude for Christ Crucified
Of course at the center of our need is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God sent His only Son and laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Is. 53). Jesus was struck for guilty sinners. Jesus was struck with the wrath of God, and by His stripes we are healed. A bunch of moderns have wildly distorted views of love, full of sentimentality and arrogance. But the Bible says that in the Cross love was displayed: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10). We don’t know what love is. And just to head off one accusation: we completely repudiate the accusation that this view of the atonement leads to child abuse. On the contrary, if anything, it’s the repudiation of this view that leads to child abuse. The human race has a guilt problem, and our guilt cries out for justice. It eats at us, and if there is no sacrifice for our sins, that guilt will rage inside us, and eventually it will lash out at innocent victims, including children. If the Cross is reduced to a pure example of love, and the propitiation for our sins is ignored or rejected, you will have generations of Christians weighed down by their guilt, despairing and angry. Only blood can take away our guilt because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). But all who look to Christ murdered on a tree and see Him as the Lamb of God, the sacrifice for their sins — they have all their sins washed away.

And those who know their sins are cleansed are a deeply grateful people: Grateful for that Cross, grateful for the Bible, grateful for all of creation, and grateful for the gift of children and the grace of raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is the gratitude we need this Thanksgiving. 

Photo by Jed Owen on Unsplash