Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 17

Birth Control & Dominion

One of the things that is very striking and obvious if you look around on a Sunday morning is that we love children. The Bible teaches that children are the inheritance of the Lord, a great reward, and faithfully raised children are a central part of our warfare against all unbelief. And because of these things, someone might be forgiven for assuming that we must have some kind of rule against birth control or that we think that it is necessary for every family to have as many children as they physically can. But we don’t. 

We certainly are at war with many modern assumptions about children. We hate the idolatry of moderns that prizes barbie bodies and vacation homes and careers over the gift of children, and the modern assumption that children are a bother and a nuisance. We hate all of that. And we hate the whole abortion culture, which includes many so-called forms of birth control, which are frequently harmful to the bodies of women and are often aimed at snuffing out the lives of newly conceived babies. We are at war with all of that. 

But Christian Dominion cannot be reduced to thoughtless breeding. A husband is required to love his wife as his own body, and that means protecting her health and life as well as providing for and raising their children in the Lord. There are methods of farming, mining, logging, fishing, and hunting that really do destroy creation long term, and are not good stewardship. Christian Dominion is not merely a matter of raw, immediate numbers. Christian Dominion requires wisdom, love, thoughtfulness, and some measure of planning. 

God is the Lord of the womb; He opens and closes the womb according to His good pleasure, but that does not therefore necessitate that husbands and wives have no responsibilities in this regard. On the whole, many moderns need to come to see the strategic value and overwhelming gift of children. Walking by faith often means welcoming more but sometimes not. Godliness is not measured by sheer number of children. Godliness is measured in gratitude and joy and faith, which often results in bigger families, but not always.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Sabbath Conquest

“O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightiest still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:1-2).

This is why we are here. The Lord who made Heaven and earth is majestic in all the earth. His Name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again in the power of the Holy Spirit, taking away our sins and setting His glory above the heavens. We gather every Sunday to worship, to proclaim: how excellent is Your name in all in the earth. He is worthy to be praised. 

And compared to His great glory, all of our praises are like the babbling of babies and infants. Which, incidentally, is part of the reason our children are most welcome to join us in our worship. They are constant reminders to us, that we all come as little children, singing and praising and praying to God our Father in Jesus’ name. 

God promises to receive our prayers and praises and send down His potent blessings, ordaining strength in and through our worship, in order to silence our enemies and avengers. 

And yet, the word used here for the “silencing” or “stilling” of our enemies is the verb form of Sabbath. God promises to use our childlike prayers and praises to give Sabbath rest to His enemies. We know this is wonderfully true because while we were still enemies, Christ died for us. God has silenced the storms of our hearts by forgiving all our sins. While we were striving to be good enough, to earn our way into God’s good graces, He paid all our debts and welcomed us home scot-free.

So we are here to declare that He is worthy of all our praise and we are here because we are eager for our enemies to come and find that same glorious Sabbath-rest with us in Jesus Christ. And so, this is your call to worship and an open invitation to everyone that can hear my voice: Jesus said, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash

Elijah & Evangeline

“For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20).

In the Old Testament law, it said this: “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her to make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins” (Ex. 22:16-17).

While this is sometimes confusing to moderns, it is actually a wonderful law for protecting the rights of women, the authority of fathers, and for deterring sexual sin. It is the origin of a dowry. A dowry is often understood by moderns to be only an inheritance that a father gives his daughter when she is given away in marriage, and while that may have been included in the ancient world, it also used to include money that a man gave to the woman he was seeking to marry as a sort of insurance policy against him leaving her. It would be enough money for the woman to live on her own and provide for herself if the man was unfaithful or deserted her. What this law required was that a man must pay that bride-price or dowry if he seduced a woman prior to betrothal or marriage, whether or not the father agreed to give his daughter away in marriage. 

This seems to be in the background as Paul addresses sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 6: Christians belong to God, and in particular, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. But if the Holy Spirit has been given to us, and He dwells in us, then we are betrothed to God, married to Him. We have been made one with the Lord. We do not belong to ourselves, any more than a husband’s body is his own, or is a wife’s body her own. When the two become one flesh, their bodies belong to one another. And how did we come to belong to God? He bought us with the bride-price of the blood of Jesus and gave us His Spirit. But there is more. 

Earlier in 1 Corinthians 6 it says that fornicators and adulterers (among other notorious sinners) will not inherit the kingdom of God, and then it says these wonderful words: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11). 

This is the center of the Christian gospel: God saves sinners. And He saves them by washing them clean, making them holy, and justifying them in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. How does this work? Justification is the doctrine of Christian courage. To the extent that we live in a land of cowards this is because we are a land that has abandoned the gospel of the Reformation, and the doctrine of justification in particular. 

And so here it is: the doctrine of justification is for guilty sinners. And it is only for guilty sinners. Good people have no need for justification. The healthy don’t need a physician. But justification is the act of God’s free grace whereby He declares sinners completely righteous for the sake and received by faith alone. In Galatians, it says that God calls those things which are not as though they are. This is the glory of justification. A moment before God’s pronouncement we are filthy sinners and the moment after we are still filthy sinners in ourselves. But God has hammered his gavel in Heaven and declared “not guilty.” Everything about us screams that we are guilty. We have been unfaithful. But God declares us “righteous.” And when we ask, “How is that possible?” God says that the penalty has been paid by another, and the righteous obedience of that Other has been reckoned to us.

The really amazing thing is that our sins were sins against God. We were betrothed to God, and we cheated on God. We cheated on God with other gods, idols, lusts. Like the prodigal son, we wasted our dowry on riotous living. And yet God in His mercy gives another. The One who did not sin, paid the bride-price for the one who did sin. 

Because the penalty has been paid, God freely forgives. This is what it means to be washed. But we need to be clear here too. When God forgives, He promises not to hold against us what we have done against Him. He promises to reckon all our sin paid for by the blood of Jesus. And this is the only basis for Christian fellowship. We are one with God because of the price that Christ paid. And we have fellowship with one another because of the price that Christ paid. And the currency is the blood of Jesus – and this blood cleanses us and restores fellowship when we confess our sins to God and one another and forgive one another for the sake of the blood of Christ. This is what it means to be bought with a price. This is what it means to be a blood-bought people. 

Elijah, my charge to you is to imitate this self-sacrificial leadership of Christ. You are being called today to lay your life down for Evangeline. This means taking responsibility for her, just as Christ took responsibility for us. Christ had reason and right to say that our problems were not His problems. But instead He drew near and claimed our problems as His own. So you must see Evangline as youself, as your own body. And as Christ has forgiven you, you must forgive her. As Christ bled and died to make you righteous, you must bleed and die for Evangeline’s good. This doesn’t mean doing whatever Evangline wants. If Christ had asked us what we thought He should when He came to earth, none of us would have been in favor of Him dying. But Christ did what we needed, what was for our good, and so we are saved. So likewise, you must study Evangeline and you must study the gospel so that you will see clearly to know what it is you must do. And it’s a pretty wonderful thing that Evangeline’s name means “gospel” – that way you will never forget. 

Evangline, my charge to you is to receive Elijah’s self-sacrificial leadership in the Lord. Elijah is not Jesus, but He is required by God to imitate to Jesus. And you are required by God to receive that imitation with all respect and honor and submission. Just as the Church receives the love of Christ with deep gratitude and honor, receive Elijah’s love and leadership and return it to him with joy and thanksgiving. Respect particularly focuses on noticing accomplishments, praising and thanking for diligence, hard work, and achievements. The first few words out of every little boy’s mouth are “watch this!” And this is because God has wired men to thrive on respect. So respect your husband. Look up to him. Seek his counsel. Serve him. And forgive him, as you have been forgiven. Just as you will be greatly blessed by Elijah’s love for you; Elijah will be greatly blessed by your respect for him. Just as you have been purchased by Christ and belong to Him, so now you belong to Elijah and he belongs to you.

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

Photo by Anna Vi on Unsplash

Noah & Mallory

The Bible is bookended with weddings. Genesis opens with the first creation and the wedding of the first man and the first woman. And Revelation closes with a city descending out of Heaven to earth like a Bride adorned for her husband, God and man in full fellowship, the promise of a new creation, without any tears or death or sorrow.

These two weddings highlight at least two features of all weddings. The first thing is that a wedding always points to greater glory. The first wedding of Adam and Eve already pointed to greater glory: the glory of the dominion mandate being fulfilled: the first family being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and having dominion over all the creatures. Every wedding looks forward to the blessings that will come: making a home, practicing hospitality, welcoming children, grandchildren, companionship, friendship, and all the joys of life – even the comfort of walking through hardships together. But the Bible teaches that the first wedding was also already pointing toward the last wedding. Paul says when God created the first man and woman and they became one flesh, that was already pointing toward Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:32). And therefore, whenever a man leaves his father and mother and joins his wife and the two become one flesh, that great mystery is being proclaimed: the mystery of God and man united: As John heard the great voice say: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). 

This is the promise of the gospel that we begin to enjoy here in this life by faith and the gift of the Spirit: As John says in his first letter: “That which we have seen and heard we declare unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 1:3). This fellowship with God and all those who share fellowship with God is fruitful. God is life and light, and therefore, that fellowship is potent. But this isn’t a bland, generic fruitfulness like a bunch of coins spitting out of a slot machine. This is the gorgeous, diverse fruitfulness of the Triune God: think galaxies and mountain ranges, and sandy beaches and clear blue water full of darting creatures, cool, dark jungles buzzing with life, sunsets playing with light and colors and shadows, and a man and woman at the pinnacle of all of it: a King and Queen, full-blooded masculinity and femininity in full bloom. 

But all of this points to the second feature of all human weddings since the first one: the reality of sin and the Fall and the need for new creation, the need for tears to be wiped away and death and sorrow to be dealt with. We live in a world that has worked very hard to confuse God’s original creation order, the glory of male and female, and the glory of masculine leadership and feminine submission. And the Fall has touched every family. This is why the promise of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb is so dear to every Christian: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.”

And yet the glory of the gospel is that this final marriage has begun in this history. It is not merely something for the end of history; it is something that has begun already through the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. And the central way this is happening is through the restoration of fellowship between God and man and between all those who are united to the Father in Christ by His Spirit. It says in 1 John, if we walk in the light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. 

It is possible to walk with God and one another in full fellowship without any darkness. How is it possible? By the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us. And how does that happen? 1 John continues: if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

Confession of sin means agreeing with God that something you said or did or thought or failed to do deserved God’s wrath and agreeing with Him that Jesus died for it and saying so to God and anyone we have sinned against or in front of. And when we forgive one another, we promising to reckon sin against us as paid for by the blood of Jesus. We are agreeing that since Jesus died for it, we will not hold it against our brother or sister. The Bible says that at the very longest, you have until the end of the day to be reconciled to someone: do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor leave room for the devil. You wouldn’t dream of leaving your doors open at night, and yet many Christians go to bed with grudges and bitterness and unconfessed sin, and then they wonder why their homes are such devilish places. After many years of pastoring, I’m convinced that this is 95% of marriage happiness and success: staying in full fellowship: confessing sin and forgiving one another quickly. This is the key to fruitfulness.

So Noah, my charge to you is to lead and guard your wife like Christ leads and guards His bride, the Church, and do this principally through cleansing her with the washing of water by the Word. This means leading in prayer and Bible reading, but it also means confessing your sins and making sure that you stay in full fellowship with your wife. If you walk in the light with God and Mallory, the glory of God will make you and her shine, and you will be more of a man day by day, and she will be an even more lovely lady day by day – and your home will be a fruitful palace. And you will be able to see clearly where you are going and what you should do because the Light of God will shine on everything. 

Mallory, my charge to you is receive this leadership from your husband: submit to him and respect him in the Lord. You are a Christian woman, and this means that you have a personal responsibility to walk in the light as God is in the Light and stay in full fellowship with God and your husband. In the same way that God has given you a deep desire to make a clean home, make sure that you keep a clean heart. In the same way that it would be hard to go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink, don’t ever go to bed with a dirty dishes in your heart. Confess your sins to God and anyone you’ve sinned against. Stay in fellowship, and don’t let the devil into your home. In this way, your marriage will be constantly pointing to the final marriage, it will be full of light and fruitfulness, and it will be growing into that final glory. 

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

Photo by Luis Tosta on Unsplash

Dobbs Celebration Message

Esther 9:20-28

Introduction
On June 24, 2022 the landmark Supreme Court ruling was handed down in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, declaring that there is no federal, constitutional right to abortion and returned the matter of abortion to the States. Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, around 65 million children have been murdered by abortion in America.

We have determined to celebrate this ruling both because of the monstrosity of the previous rulings of Roe/Casey being struck down and because it has granted God’s people a glorious opportunity to protect more pre-born lives in the states.

Fundamentally, we are simply required by God to be a rejoicing, grateful people. If we are called upon to be a rejoicing people, a grateful people, a festival people, then how much more are we to rejoice when God uses a very imperfect president and very imperfect justices to strike down such a hideously bloodthirsty edict? And the story of God’s deliverance of the Jews in the book of Esther provides us helpful biblical principles to bolster our celebration of this Dobbs victory. 

The Text: “And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far, to stablish this among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly…” (Esth. 9:20-28).

Summary of the Text
Mordecai writes as the newly appointed Persian king’s chief counselor, urging the Jews in every province to keep an annual two-day festival (Esth. 9:20-23). This festival was to celebrate the destruction of Haman’s plot to slaughter the Jews, Esther’s courageous intervention, and would be called Purim (Esth. 9:24-26). The Jews received Mordecai’s instruction and determined to remember those days in all their generations (Esth. 9:27-28).  

Free to Celebrate
Part of what this story teaches us is that God is pleased when His people celebrate His goodness and deliverance. A central part of the law given to Israel was a festival calendar, with feast days and sabbath years (cf. Lev. 23). God put His tabernacle in Israel so that they would continually rejoice before Him: “And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee” (Dt. 12:7). Even part of the tithe was to be spent on celebrating before the Lord: “And spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household” (Dt. 14:26 ESV). This is why Moses warned the people that if the curses of the covenant came upon them, it would be “because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things” (Dt. 28:47). If feasting and rejoicing before the Lord was central to God’s training wheels in the Old Covenant, and Esther and Mordecai and the Jews rightly applied those principles to their moment in history, how much more so ought God’s New Covenant people look for new acts of deliverance to celebrate? 

Celebrating Imperfect Decisions
Part of what is also helpful in the Esther story is the fact that what is being celebrated at Purim is not a perfect decision. Why doesn’t King Ahasuerus simply rescind his previous immoral order? We are not told, other than the pagan precedent mentioned elsewhere, the Law of the Persians and the Medes “which cannot be revoked” (Esth. 1:19, cf. Dan. 6:8-12). But of course even that so-called “law” is evil since only God’s law is so perfect and holy that it cannot ever be revoked. But King Ahasuerus preserves the pagan Persian precedent and instead of overturning his previous evil order, he issues a new decree giving the Jews the right to defend themselves against their adversaries (Esth. 8:11, 9:1ff). If Purim was a godly celebration of deliverance (and it was), then the Dobbs decision is worthy of celebration when two evil rulings are reversed and the right of the states to defend themselves and their unborn children is restored.

Applications

Don’t Let Up: Christians (and conservatives in general) have a bad habit of failing to implement the principle of war known as “pursuit.” We are like the king of Israel who struck the ground three times, instead five or six (2 Kgs. 13:18-19). In the Esther story, Haman was hung on the gallows and the Jews defended themselves, killing at least 500 on the first day of deliverance (Esth. 9:6). But Esther asked for more: the sons of Haman to be hung and one more day of self-defense on the part of the Jews (Esth. 9:13-15). 

So too, we must not rest until all human lives have equal protection under the law according to God’s Word. For example: Rape and incest are not reasonable exceptions; we should never punish a child for the crimes of his father. We must insist that our leaders here in Idaho work to end this injustice, where these exceptions still exist despite a near complete ban.

“Morning after pills” and other so-called “contraception” that intentionally disturb or do not allow fertilized eggs to implant are abortifacients. Statistics suggest that more and more abortions are taking place in the first few weeks of pregnancy through the use of these chemical abortion pills. We must work and pray for the day when these are illegal and unthinkable.

We must also be particularly vigilant and wary about the burgeoning IVF (in vitro fertilization) and surrogate industry of “boutique families.” Human life begins at conception, at the fertilization of an egg, therefore we must protect and honor those lives, doing all that we can to preserve the natural family intact. Sometimes in IVF many eggs are fertilized and discarded or else frozen indefinitely. Sometimes fertilized eggs are discarded because they appear to be less “viable.” While there may be ways to use this technology in very careful ways to overcome infertility, Christians must be very aware of the way this technology is being used to treat life and family as something that we have power over, rather than to humbly receive from the Lord. Such hubris is an idolatrous abomination. We should have great skepticism for an industry that has been lying to us, especially over the last few years.

Keeping the Feast: Finally, we should keep feasting and celebrating all of God’s deliverances as our means of pursuit. The story of Esther and Purim is actually part of the case for the change from a seventh day Sabbath to our Sunday Lord’s Day. It would take something greater than the first Creation (Ex. 20:11) and the first Exodus (Dt. 5:15) to change the Sabbath day, and Christ has accomplished a new Creation and a Greater Exodus, and so Christians have been feasting on the First Day of the week ever since. The joy of the Lord is our strength, and if covenant keeping in the Old Covenant was marked by feasting and rejoicing, how much more the New Covenant when Christ has finally accomplished what the Old Covenant pointed to? 

As the New Testament says, “Rejoice always, again I say, Rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:18). In The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom recounts how her sister Betsie insisted on giving thanks for the fleas in the concentration camp. Later, it came out that the fleas kept the guards away so that they could read the Bible and many woman came to the Lord. If the ten Booms could have a mini-festival for the fleas in a Nazi concentration camp, how much more ought we to rejoice when God grants us victories like Dobbs?

Christ is risen from the dead: we have been brought into a new creation, set free from sin and the devil. The hardships of this world do not compare to the glory that will be revealed (Rom. 8:18). Our light afflictions which are for a moment are working in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17). So that we can even rejoice in tribulations and trials (Js. 1:2ff).  

Part of this joyful festivity is also learning to rejoice in all of the little things. This is our “pursuit.” If we want God to give us the greater blessing of a complete end to abortion in our land, then we need to be practicing the kind of faithful rejoicing now that would be ready for such glory.  

Photo by Bill Mason on Unsplash

Truth Will Set You Free

Introduction
Well, it’s been a minute, and apologies to everyone who noticed. But Lord willing and the crick don’t rise, I’ll be back at this blog on the more regular, as in once or twice a week, with articles and the occasional shorter exhortation or meditation for your edification.

So where were we? As our world continues to descend into this cacophony of madness, Christians understandably ask themselves and one another, “What can we do?” When activists appear at city council meetings and school board meetings to simply scream in order to “express” themselves, one wonders what could possibly come next – what about animal noises to express the agony of endangered species? Anyone want to put that on your bingo card for this next year?

But even on so-called “talk shows,” where I suppose the idea is to “talk,” with you know, words which express ideas, we’ve seen an increasing lack of actual communication, what they used to call in the old days, “an exchange of ideas.” These days, it is more and more common for words to simply be chucked at one another like so many rocks. Words are weaponized, and with the added nuclear power of social media and the internet, a really good volley of words can go viral, scoring points and “owning” your opponent, burying reputations in various neanderthal stone ages. 

In a moment like this, it can be tempting to give up telling the truth, give up rigorous reasoning and argument. I mean, Jesus did say not to cast pearls before swine, after all. And that principle certainly still applies in some situations. But there is a broader play at work that needs to be pointed out. 

The Line of Despair
Since about the time of the so-called Enlightenment, the thinkers of deep thoughts have done their best to convince normal, ordinary people that the truth – transcendent truth – moral, ethical, cosmological truth – is very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to know. Francis Schaeffer called this broad trend “the line of despair,” a progression of ever-increasing doubt over whether we can know what is true or what is real, beyond this physical, material world. It’s one thing to measure weight or mass and know that kind of observable, so-called “scientific” truth, but it is another entirely to make truth claims about God, morality, and religion. Beginning with philosophers like Rene Descartes who attempted to ground his knowledge of the truth in his own ability to think – this was the beginning of the downgrade. Emmanuel Kant came later and divided up the sort of things human beings can know: arguing that some things like observable, measurable data are knowable by our minds, but other things like religion and ethics and transcendent meaning are sort of trans-rational. Kant said you can sort of know them, but you can’t know them like you know physical measurements and sensations. 

Of course this was in direct contradiction to what the Bible says: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). The Bible teaches that invisible, spiritual realities are clearly seen, knowable, observable just like the created order. And right on schedule, Modernists did exactly what Paul says they would do in that position: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:22). And having crafted idols from creation (instead of worshiping the Creator), God gives these sorts of people over to all manner of sexual confusion and uncleanness. And here we are.

But let’s trace this carefully: theology was known as the “Queen of the Sciences” in the Middle Ages and Reformation, the understanding that knowledge of God was essential for other knowledge, and not only that, but that knowledge of God was the path of all other true knowledge. The implication being that God has revealed Himself truly in His Word and in His world, in special revelation and natural revelation in ways that were actually suited to the right use of human reason. It was understood that sin has inhibited this natural capacity, and apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, natural, fallen man would only have partial and distorted knowledge to varying degrees, apart from God’s common grace suppressing the effects of the Fall. Nevertheless, because of this regenerating grace and common grace, true knowledge of God and of His world was possible, and not only possible but foundational to all other knowledge.  

But Modernism was an all-out attack on this vision, fundamentally seeking truth apart from God, and as predicted, the range of true knowledge steadily decreased. Modernism held up knowledge of maths and sciences, and for a few minutes claimed it could do amazing things without acknowledging a Creator. But the most consistent thinkers quickly realized that reason and truth doesn’t really work if there is not an ultimate rational and intelligent source. And so postmodernism was born – basically relativism – doubt and skepticism about everything. And meaning and truth simply sunk down into the feelings and emotions and appetites. This is what one author has called the Triumph of the Therapeutic. And this is how you ultimately end up with people honestly thinking that they were born in the wrong body because that is how they feel – quite apart from what is true. This is the line of despair. 

The Devil asked the woman in the Garden, “Did God really say?” And centuries later, Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” But Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Moderns and postmoderns have said, “you cannot know the truth.” And so we are enslaved by doubts and irrationalism, lies and despair. 

Conclusion
And so once again, we return to the question of what Christians ought to do in this moment when no one seems at all interested in truth, what Francis Shaffer called true truth, the kind that goes all the way down and reaches all the way up. What do you do when a toddler lies down in the toy section kicking and screaming, throwing a fit? The answer is tell the truth, beginning with the biggest truths, the largest truths, the deepest truths. There is a God, and He made us and all things. He has spoken, and we have His Word in Scripture and in nature. He has spoken so that we might know Him and know the world He has made. We have rebelled, but in His mercy, He sent His only Son for our treacherous tantrums. He was crucified for sinners, and raised from the dead for the forgiveness of all our sins and to make all things new. He was crucified and raised to form the very reality our sin so irrationally denies. 

When the world descends into childish, irrational chaos, the task of Christians is to keep telling the truth, preaching the truth, and cheerfully insisting on the truth, like confident grownups. God’s Word is what called light out of darkness in the beginning. God’s Word is what formed the Heavens and earth from their original chaos. God’s Word is what shines in dark, chaotic hearts to refashion them in regeneration. And God’s Word is truth. You do not stop telling the truth to the toddler when he throws an irrational fit. You do not scream back. You cheerfully, firmly insist on reality. And you keep telling the truth, trusting the God of truth to make His Word form what is not yet there. 

Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash

Spirit of Adoption, Forgiveness, & Glory

Pentecost 2023
Rom. 8:14-17

Introduction
We live in a world that has rejected God the Father, and so we are a nation of bastards, fatherless and angry, fatherless and despairing. In Ephesians 3:15 it says that all fatherhood is named after God the Father, and therefore, when you reject God the Father you are rejecting all fatherhood. You are insisting on being illegitimate orphans. And so because we have rejected God the Father, we are a fatherless people. We are fatherless and angry, fatherless and despairing. And this is why God the Father sent His Son into the world: so that all the lost and rebellious sons might be brought home, to adopt them as His own sons by His Spirit. This is the gospel of Pentecost – the good news of the Spirit of the Son. 

The Text: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God…” (Rom. 8:14-17).

Summary of the Text
Paul is in the middle of an argument, but the central point is that whoever is led by the Spirit of God is a son of God (Rom. 8:14). This Spirit is the Spirit of Christ who was obedient to the point of death, condemned sin in His flesh on the cross, and rose from the dead (Rom. 8:2-3, 9-11). This Spirit is not of bondage to fear (because all of the condemnation for our sin has fallen on Christ in our place, Rom. 8:1-3), but rather, the Spirit of adoption has been given to us which teaches us to call God ‘Our Father’ (Rom. 8:15). This Spirit has been given to assure us that we belong to God as His children (Rom. 8:16). And this assurance includes the full inheritance of Christ and all of His glory, while sharing in His suffering (Rom. 8:17). 

The Spirit of Adoption
It has been rightly said that God has no grandchildren. The point is that salvation in Christ is a direct adoption by God the Father, in Christ, by His Spirit. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus. You cannot come to the Father through your parents, or your grandparents, or your older siblings. It is a glorious gift to grow up in the covenant, to grow up with believing parents and grandparents, and it is glorious to not remember the first time you believed. If parents are raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (as they are required to do so), this means that most testimonies will be something along the lines of: “I was raised in a Christian family and don’t remember a time I didn’t believe.” We believe it is a great blessing to have a church full of “boring” testimonies. But we never want to forget that even these boring testimonies are glorious. If you know the Father, you have passed from death to life. If you know the Father, your sins were all washed away. If you know the Father, you came to Him through Christ Who is the only Mediator between God and men. And what He mediates is His own relationship to the Father: we are joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17). We are sons in the Son. He freely shares everything with us. And if you aren’t sure if you know the Father: here is the free offer: Come! If you feel like you’re on the outside looking in. If you look around and aren’t sure if you have what everyone around you has, call on the name of the Lord. Call out to the Father. And when you do, know that it is the Spirit in you. 

Nevertheless, part of this inheritance is also the people of God. Elsewhere, Paul prays that “ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18). “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member but many” (1 Cor. 12:13-14). As we have noted, some of us have the great blessing of having grown up in a faithful Christian family, but many are starting from scratch, either as new converts or simply as being awakened to the necessity to follow Christ more faithfully. But all of us have been given the same Spirit of the Son, and in Him, we have all been given the inheritance of the saints. God has no grandchildren, but all of God’s true children have parents and grandparents in the faith.

The Spirit of Forgiveness
This Spirit is not a spirit of bondage to fear (Rom. 8:15). In Hebrews it says that Jesus partook of flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:15-15). Bondage to fear is fundamentally fear of death, and the reason we fear death is because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). For guilty sinners, death is punishment, and this is the power of the devil, Satan – the Accuser. He accuses us and condemns us for our sins, and we know that we deserve to die. This is the chain that Satan uses on us. He yanks the chain of our sins and reminds that we deserve condemnation and death. But the Spirit of Pentecost is the Spirit of deliverance because Christ condemned all our sin in His body on the cross (Rom. 8:3). All our offenses were nailed to the cross, and therefore all the accusations, all the condemnation was blotted out by His blood (Col. 3:14). And now Satan has nothing on us, and the sting of death is gone (1 Cor. 15:56). When Jesus died the lock on the chain was broken, and when you turn to the Lord, the chain fell apart. So we aren’t afraid anymore.

This same Spirit of forgiveness sets us free to forgive others. Guilt is one kind of bondage to fear, but bitterness is another. Many people are kept in bondage to fear by sin committed against them, often by parents or others close to us: fear that it will happen again, fear that no justice will be done. But bitterness is like chaining yourself to someone else’s sin (Heb. 12:15). Forgiveness breaks that chain.

Forgiveness isn’t the same thing as trust. Forgiveness is a promise, not a feeling. It’s a promise not to hold someone’s sin against them before the Lord. And if someone isn’t repentant and hasn’t asked for your forgiveness, you can’t be fully reconciled. But you can and must have forgiveness ready for them. Have forgiveness ready like bread baking in your heart; have forgiveness like a bottle of fine wine waiting by the door. Be like the father in the parable looking down the road, ready and eager to run to them, because that is how you have been forgiven (Eph. 4:31-32). This Spirit gives this glory.

The Spirit of Glory
The Spirit has been given to guarantee our glory in the Son, and the text goes on to say this glory will include all of creation itself (Rom. 8:17ff). The Spirit restores, glorifies, and transfigures everything; the Spirit anoints for rule and battle (Rom. 8:37). We are more than conquerors through all these things. 

All wars are ultimately fought with and over glory. We fight for competing visions of glory, and we fight with whatever we consider our greatest strengths. Many Christians are at a loss about what to do about the current madness assaulting what is left of Western civilization. But this is the battleplan: pursue the glory of your Father as His sons. And do not underestimate the potency of this. We live in a world of fatherlessness, and that is what is driving the insanity. And some of you have experienced this in your own families and all of us have experienced this in our sin. Sin is fatherlessness. Sin is to go into the far country, whether for 15 minutes or 15 years. But here is the good news: Here is your glory: you are not fatherless. You are not orphans. You have been adopted in the Son, and You have been given His Spirit. Welcome home.

And Your Heavenly Father has given you all good things – it all proclaims His glory. Everything good triumphs over evil. Forgiveness triumphs over bitterness. Generosity conquers greed. Joyful marriage confounds perversion. Beauty overcomes ugliness. Therefore, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely… cultivate those glorious things. Your glory is how you fight. And the glory of children is their father (Prov. 17:6). And God is our Father.

Photo by Jace & Afsoon on Unsplash

Cover or Confront

The Bible teaches that you have two options when it comes to those who sin against you. You may either cover sin in love or you may confront sin in love. You do not have the option of stewing in it, nursing it, telling others about it, writing poetry about it, or posting it online. And this applies particularly to those closest to you: your parents, your children, your spouse, your brother, your sister, your roommate. If someone sins against you or offends you, you may either cover the sin in love or confront it in love. 

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses” (Prov. 10:12). “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends” (Prov. 17:9). “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). Most offenses need to be covered in love. The apostle says love covers a multitude of sins. This means simply overlooking the offense, refusing to register it, putting it under the blood of Christ. This means that it really is gone. You cannot say you are covering it in love and then think about it some more or bring it up a week later. Covering an offense in love means that you have dropped it in the volcano of the Cross. It’s gone. 

However, some sins need to be dealt with: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Gal. 6:1). “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Mt. 18:15). Being spiritual doesn’t mean you’re perfectly holy, but it does mean that you have a spirit of meekness, honestly seeking the truth, seeking to win your brother. Sometimes, additional conversations are needed, sometimes a second or third party are need, but sometimes you just let it go and cover it in love at the point. Our goal is to be at peace with one another, as far as it depends upon us. 

Photo by Toby Elliott on Unsplash

Thomas & Anna

I’ve been particularly excited about this wedding because I think it’s the first Fight Laugh Feast wedding. I’m not sure if you actually first met while working at CrossPolitic, but I’m fairly sure the fumes of the CrossPolitic t-shirt machine had something to do with you falling in love. 

When I asked Thomas if there was anything he’d like me to talk about in my homily in particular, he said, he would like it be “atomic gospel.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I took it to mean that he wanted something explosive. And since this is sort of a CrossPolitic wedding, I decided to talk about politics.

When the Supreme Court Obergefell decision came down, claiming to legalize homosexual marriage, most Americans shrugged and carried on with their business. If some conservative Christians objected, it was almost entirely because they believe homosexuality is immoral. And of course the reply that came back was simply, you don’t have to agree with what other people do – you’re free to disagree. 

Of course the Bible does teach that there is a morality issue at play — homosexuality is immoral, but most Christians didn’t connect all the dots. The bottom line is that Obergefell technically made all children born in the United States wards of the state – or at least it claims to. Here’s how it works: in the name of equality, the Supreme Court claimed that same-sex couples required the right to marry. But according to six thousand years of tradition, history, and biology, marriage has always been the way a family is created, where, in the ordinary course of things, children are conceived and born and raised with a mother and a father. This is because a man and woman can make promises before God and witnesses and then go and do what married people do and odds are pretty good that a new person will be conceived shortly after. And the key thing to notice is that a man and a woman can form a family and bring new people into the world without saying “boo” to any government official. This is how God made the world. 

But when Obergefell claimed to give the right to marriage to homosexuals, it was in effect saying that as far as the state is concerned, marriage is just a sexless contract and children are not inherently connected to that institution. Some people buy Fords, some people prefer Toyotas. Some couples have RVs, some have pets, some have children. But since children are no longer viewed as organically related to marriage, the new people being born into the world have to be accounted for by some means, some mechanism. In the old view, your children belonged to you because you swore marriage vows in front of witnesses, and then you moved in together, and then you watched your wife’s womb fill with life. Birth certificates registered the fact of the birth, but your children belong to you because, well, you made them all by yourself. 

But if the state claims that it is officially agnostic on where children come from, since a so-called marriage between two men for example might later entail trying to procure a child by some other means (since they cannot on their own), and let’s say they do, how can it be proven that the child belongs to them? Well, this requires the state to treat every child as an orphan in principle, and therefore, while we are not there in practice, the state in effect has claimed jurisdiction over deciding which children belong to which parents. By defying six thousand years of human history and God’s clear Word, the Supreme Court claimed the power to redefine marriage and in effect claimed lordship over children and the family.

This is what has been called an inescapable concept. It is not whether but which. It’s not whether we will have a Lord and Master, it is only a question of which Lord, which Master. And this is why the most basic Christian confession remains revolutionary: Jesus is Lord. Christ is Lord. And the implications become clearer and clearer the more pagan a land becomes. If there is no god above, if there is no lord over this land, then someone or something in this world will be lord and master. What is your highest appeal? Is it the Supreme Court? The United Nations? The World Economic Forum? To say that Jesus is Lord is to tell every authority in this world that they have a boss – they have a Lord and a Master, namely Jesus Christ. 

Of course the reply comes, why should I care? And the answer is this: Jesus Christ came to this earth and lived a sinless life, He was betrayed, suffered, bled, and was crucified for sinners, and on the third day, He rose from the dead. He was seen by hundreds before He ascended into Heaven, and He is currently at the right hand of God the Father, where He reigns over Heaven and Earth, and He will reign until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet, the last enemy being death itself, and He will come again to judge this world, the living and the dead. Why should you care? Because Jesus is risen from the dead, and He is the Lord of this world. The State is not Lord, the Supreme Court is not Lord, the UN is not Lord – none of them have died for our sins and risen from the dead. Christ is Lord. Marriage is between one man and one woman because Jesus is Lord and He made the world such that they can make babies. Jesus is Lord and therefore our children belong to us.

So Thomas, my charge to you is submit to Christ. Christ is Lord; so Christ is your Lord. You are being made a lord of a new house today, but the only way you will carry out your lordship well is by being in complete submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that you must obey Him in how you treat His beloved daughter, Anna. You must love her and lay your life down for her and for her good. You must honor her as the weaker vessel and as an heir together with you of the grace of life. 

Anna, my charge to you is to submit to Christ also. Christ is Lord; so Christ is your Lord. You are being made the lady of a new house today, and that means that Thomas is being made your lord under the Lord Jesus. Just as he must submit to Christ in his leadership and love of you, so you too must submit to Christ by submitting to Thomas’s leadership and love. This means you must respect your husband highly, look up to him, and receive his counsel, adorning yourself and your home for Him with all wisdom and grace. 

And together may you defy the false lordship of the state. May you be fruitful and multiply as lord and lady of a sovereign jurisdiction, called the Carpenter Household, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. 

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

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash

Elijah & Bea

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

In military and security contexts, green represents normal, safe conditions, yellow is on alert, watchful, and red is some kind of active threat. We live in a world where it is increasingly necessary to be at yellow more often than not.

From mass shooters targeting schools to Drag Queens demanding access to children to lockdown orders, mask mandates, and demands to take a vaccine or lose your job, many normal Americans do not understand what is happening to our country. But the short answer is that we let our guard down. We have not been watchful, firm in the faith, or strong like men. 

This has happened slowly over time, like the proverbial frog being boiled alive. The Bible teaches that everything out there has an origin in human hearts. As a man thinks, so is he, or at least, so he becomes. Jesus taught that bitter hatred and anger in the heart is the seed of violence and murder. He taught that lusting after a woman in your heart, is the seed of adultery. And as every gardener will tell you, weeds are easiest to deal with when they are small. 

In Psalm 19, David prays “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression” (Ps. 19:12-13). David recognizes that our faults are often mysterious. We sin, and we look back at our sin, and it never makes any sense. But he can at least see a progression: there are hidden faults, presumptuous sins, and then finally, great transgressions. People don’t wake up one day and decide to ruin their lives out of nowhere, any more than giant weeds just suddenly appear overnight. What is usually happening is a lot hidden/secret sins are accumulating, and then you start getting sloppy with presumptuous sins. Secret faults are usually in your head, in your heart, under the surface, but presumptuous sins are things you know are wrong and maybe those closest to you can see them, but you just ignore them. You don’t deal with them. Maybe angry outbursts, drunkenness, maybe sexual sin. 

But what David says is that these sins inevitably lead to the Great Transgressions. Romans 1 says that refusal to honor God leads to unnatural sexual perversions. Proverbs says that the man who goes to the prostitute is already hated by God. But the thing to note is that when you let the little sins go, you are already surrendering in principle. All sin is telling God that He is wrong, and that you know better. But if God is wrong about your bitterness against your mother in your heart, if God is wrong about your lust in your heart, then you can’t slam on the brakes when that same logic is right in front of you in bigger ways. Why can’t you act on those sins? If you’re right and God is wrong, why not? 

So the logic of sin leads to everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. The logic of sin leads to everyone serving themselves, and there are no brakes on that car. If the highest good is doing whatever you want, doing what feels good, what seems good to you, then you have in effect crowned yourself King or Queen. But that means that everyone else is supposed to serve you, and a nation of that gets you what we’ve now got. 

The problem is that every one of us has lived this way to some extent. Everyone has sinned. Everyone has guilt and shame for what they’ve done, and the Devil whispers in your heart that it’s too late, that’s just the way the world is. But Jesus said that He came to take away our guilt and shame; He claimed to have the authority to forgive all our sins. It’s one thing if you sin against me and ask my forgiveness, but Jesus claimed to be able to forgive everyone any sin they have committed. The Bible says that He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross for sin; He was crucified for the secret sins, the presumptuous sins, and the Great Transgressions, so that we might go free. And then He rose from the dead on the third day, proving that our sins were really paid for. 

This nation was built by great men and women, and they were great fundamentally because they knew they weren’t great. They knew that humans have this sin problem, and they were Christians who knew that the only way for that sin problem to be dealt with was the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross is what made them watchful and strong.

So Elijah, my charge to you is to be on yellow alert. Be watchful. Be watchful first of all over your own heart. Deal with sin as quickly as it occurs. The Bible says that if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. That’s how you deal with sin. Admit it and ask for forgiveness from God anyone else you sinned against. Keep your heart clean so that you can see clearly in order to watchful over your wife and family. Just as you must be willing to defend your wife’s physical life, you must also protect her spiritual life. Do not let any small sins develop in your marriage or your home. Confess your sins and forgive your wife quickly. This is how you must be strong for Bea; this is how you love her like Christ loved us. You must act like a man, be steadfast in your faith, and so be watchful. This is the only way you will be ready to face any other threat as well. 

Bea, my charge to you is to also be on yellow alert. It’s striking that Paul urged the whole Corinthian church to act like men and be strong, including the women. Of course you practice this manly strength as a woman, but you are to do this beginning with your own heart. Be watchful. Do not let any little sins creep in there. Confess any bitterness, any resentment, any envy right away before they grow up into big ugly sins. Keep your heart clean, so that your house and family will be clean. Under God’s blessing, we trust that you will become a mother of a number of tall children, and all of your maternal instincts will be oriented to protecting your children. This is good and right, but always remember that sin is the greatest threat. Sin is what grows up into all of the other threats in our world. And so remember that the Cross of Jesus is where all sin goes to die. So kill your sin there, and then stand with your husband, help him, serve him, and kill sin together. And in so doing you will be part of a great Reformation in this land. 

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

Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash