Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 18

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.

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You & Your Children 1

Faith, Fellowship, & Fruitfulness: Heb. 11:1, 6
[Sermon audio/video found here.]

Introduction
As we are a congregation of fruitful families, we will spend the next five Sundays reviewing what the Bible says about raising children. This week we begin with the big picture goals of Faith, Fellowship, and Fruitfulness, and from there we will proceed to parenting young children, teenagers, courtship and marriage, and finally grandparents and grandchildren. 

I want to frame this series not merely as common sense and biblical principles (although that’s true), I also want to frame this in terms of our cultural and political moment. When Moses preached the sermon series of Deuteronomy, he was giving Joshua and the elders their marching orders for conquest. While our culture self-immolates, many thoughtful Christians ask themselves, “What can we do?” There are many things we can and should do, but one of them is gather ammo. And by that I mean, have children and train them well (Ps. 127). 

Training them well begins with a firm faith in God the Rewarder. There is an enormous difference between parenting in faith and parenting in fear. One fills a home with tension, stress, and constant anxiety; the other fills a home with relief, peace, and joy. 

Faith vs. Fear
Faith means trusting that God is there, and that He is for you and for your children. The center of this faith is salvation in Jesus Christ: “If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:31-32) All things – like what? How about our children? And this is precisely what was promised by the Prophet Malachi: “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:5-6). And Luke says this was John the Baptist (Lk. 1:17). Jesus came to remove the curse of sin, particularly in how it tends to flow through generations. 

But the Old Testament promises of the New Covenant go even further: “As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and forever” (Is. 59:21). Isaiah says that the New Covenant includes the promise of God’s Spirit and words being with us and with our children and our grandchildren forever. 

“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me” (Jer. 32:38-40). 

What good thing does God promise those who trust in Him? He promises to turn the hearts of our children toward us and toward Him, so that His Word will remain in their mouths and the mouths of our grandchildren forever, so that they may fear Him for their good. This means that the dominant tone in a Christian family must be relief, joy, gratitude, laughter, delight, and freedom because of the gospel promises of God. And fathers/husbands, you must be the joy-bringers. 

Staying in Joyful Fellowship
In regeneration, we are made alive by faith in Christ, and we are brought into fellowship with the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit and given a joy that can never be taken away (Jn. 16:22). This fellowship with God is the fullness of joy, and we share that fellowship with one another, with everyone who is in fellowship with the Father (1 Jn. 1:3-4). When a new child is born into a Christian home, they are sovereignly placed by God into that Christian fellowship. This is why the Bible calls the children of at least one believing parent “saints” (1 Cor. 7:14). But this holy fellowship must be maintained by walking in the Light and the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from all sin (1 Jn. 1:7). This cleansing takes place either through the joyful covering of sin in love (1 Pet. 4:8, Prov. 10:12) or the gracious confronting of sin in love (Gal. 6:1). This is why love is called the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14). 

When covering sin in must be completely put away and forgotten under the blood; when confronting sin, the goal is confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, and winning your brother (Mt. 18:15). The Hippocratic Oath applies here also: first do no harm. There’s no situation so bad that you can’t make it worse. Sometimes invasive surgery is necessary, but often not and risks infection. Remember a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city (Prov. 18:19). Bitterness is resentment, grudges, past offenses that spring up defiling many with all kinds of trouble (Heb. 12:15). But love keeps no record of wrongs and does not let the sun go down on anger; therefore sin must be dealt with right away, as soon as possible (1 Cor. 13:5, Eph. 4:26).  

Applications
Faith means believing that God is there, and that He is for you and for your children because of what He has done in Jesus Christ. This is the seed of the gospel from which proceeds all Christian fruitfulness. And this means that a Christian home is marked by this joy and relief. Let there be light in Goshen.

Christian love guards this joy and the resulting fellowship by dealing with sin as quickly as possible, either covering the sin in love or confronting the sin in love, remembering to take the log out of your own eye first. This includes parents confessing their own sins to their children. This is how we keep the light shining.

Finally, Christian faith believes God that children and joyful families are central to the mission of the earth being filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. God is our Father and we have a great inheritance in Him, including our children, they are the inheritance of the Lord and reinforcements as we receive them in faith. 

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Four Questions for my 1689 Brothers

The central debate between 1689 London Baptist brothers and 1646 Westminster Presbyterian brothers is the nature of the New Covenant. Is the New Covenant only made up of regenerate persons or does it consist in some measure of a “mixed multitude” – both believers and unbelievers (as in the Old Covenant in Israel). The argument over whether infants and young children should be baptized on the basis of the profession of faith of their parents highlights this difference. The Presbyterian view holds greater continuity with the Old Covenant, that the promises are for those who believe and their children, while acknowledging that there are still some who come into the New Covenant who do not believe and are not regenerate. 

On the other hand, the Baptist view points to passages like Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 to argue that the promise of the New Covenant is that it will be better than the Old Covenant and not like the Old Covenant, where many did not believe. The strongest argument for this perspective (in my view) points to the efficacious ministry of Jesus as the mediator of this new and better covenant. And if your Calvinism is firing on all cylinders, all of your particular redemption and efficacious atonement theology kicks in, and you might suspect your Presbyterian brothers are going a little wobbly. How could Jesus, the High Priest of this New Covenant, lose anyone He died for? Well, the short answer of course is that He doesn’t: everyone Christ intends to save, He saves to the uttermost and not one person can be plucked from His firm, saving hand. But there are other texts that describe a broader, more universal ministry which some partake of and yet reject which us Presbyterian types would point to as evidence that the New Covenant is something a bit broader than just the company of the elect. But I’m getting ahead of myself… 

Let me add one more thought before jumping in to my questions for my 1689 Baptist brothers. I offer these questions in an honest spirit of curiosity – not gotcha questions at all, and for the sake of clarity. To anyone who cares to reply, thanks much. As someone who has grown up in the Westminster tradition, there are aspects of the 1689 position that are still very foreign to me, but since I consider you all my brothers and comrades in arms, I’d at least like to hear you out. And related to this last point, I serve as a pastor in a community that has worked together with Reformed Baptist families for decades. In fact, I’ve probably done more believers’ baptisms in the last year or so than I’ve done my whole ministry. So this is not at all meant to signal some kind of change to that warm friendship and comradery. These are just some questions that have occurred to me from time to time – questions I assume that 1689 brothers have answered many times but I simply don’t know the answers to. So four questions for you. 

First Question
How do you understand Jesus when He says that He is the vine and we are the branches in Jn. 15? If you are a Calvinist, you do not believe that you can truly come into Christ and then be severed from Him later. You believe in the preservation of the saints. But then in what way may someone be organically united to Christ and yet not bear fruit and be cut out and thrown into the fire? What is that relationship to Christ called? Similarly, the covenant is likened to an olive tree/vine in the Old Covenant (Jer. 11). When Paul describes the Jews being cut out of the olive tree and Gentiles being grafted in, how is that not the New Covenant (Rom. 11)? Furthermore, the warning in Romans 11 is specifically that the Gentile branches not boast themselves against those branches that were cut out since the same God who cut the natural branches (Jews) out is able to do the same again with prideful/unbelieving Gentile branches. Why is the most natural reading of John 15 and Romans 11 not that the New Covenant still admits cutting out and grafting in?

Second Question
How do you understand 1 Cor. 10 where Paul’s warning of the Corinthian Christians rests upon a strong continuity between the Old and New Covenant? Paul tells the Corinthians that Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea, and they ate spiritual food in the wilderness and drank spiritual drink, and the Rock that followed them in the wilderness was Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4). Paul says that the New Covenant Corinthians have what the Old Covenant Israelites had. You have baptism? They had baptism. You have the Lord’s Supper? They had the Lord’s Supper. You have Christ? They had Christ. Those things were written for our examples, Paul says, that we should not lust after evil things as they lusted (1 Cor. 10:6). “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also temped… Now all these things happened unto them as examples… Therefore let him that think he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:9-12). If the New Covenant, marked by baptism and the Lord’s Supper, does not have unbelievers, how does Paul’s warning apply? How could New Covenant members actually “take heed lest they fall”? 

Third Question
How do you understand the universal saving language of the New Testament? A common objection from Arminians is the claim that the blood of Jesus must be attempting to save everyone since the New Testament so often claims a universal efficacy. Beginning with the most famous Bible verse of all: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world might be saved through Him” (Jn. 3:16-17). How do you understand God’s saving love for “the world”? Or elsewhere Jesus said that if He would be lifted up on the cross, He would draw all men to Himself (and this He said describing what kind of death He would die) (Jn. 12:32-33). How do you understand Christ’s promise to draw “all men” to Himself? Perhaps most pointed would be the notion of “propitiation” not only for our sins, but also for “the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:2). How is Jesus the propitiation for the sins of the whole world? 

The usual Calvinistic answer to these questions is a combination of recognizing that universal language need not be required to be absolutely universal in order to still be true as well as an openness to distinguishing between sufficiency and efficiency. Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to save every last human being, but according to God’s secret, decretal will, it is only efficient to save the elect. The ultimate impact of Christ’s saving work will be world-wide and in the end, the total number of the saved will so overshadow the number of the damned that “all men” will have been drawn to Christ. I think these are reasonable explanations, but they expand the lexical-theological possibilities of the universal language in the New Testament. Is Jesus drawing “all men” to Himself? Did Jesus die to save the world? And my question is: if you are willing to recognize that the efficacy of the cross can be described in those universal terms, without meaning an exhaustive and absolute universal application, why can’t the same be true of Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8? Why can’t those universalizing texts (Jer. 31/Heb. 8) be making a true theological and historical point (e.g. compared to the efficacy of the Old Covenant, the New Covenant will be WAY more efficacious, the ministry of Jesus in Heaven will be WAY more fruitful, and WAY better and therefore not like the Old Covenant in those ways)?

Fourth Question
How do you explain the lack of significant argument and controversy surrounding the new exclusion of children from the covenants of promise in the New Testament? God’s dealing with Israel by households and covenant promises for children and grandchildren were far more central to the Old Covenant than the general exclusion of the Gentiles, and yet the inclusion of the Gentiles takes up portions of nearly every book of the New Testament. How could an even more monumental shift not have required at least another Jerusalem council and multiple mentions in Paul’s letters? Instead, what we have are many clarifications about the change in ceremonial laws (e.g. clean/unclean, holy days, circumcision) and the repeated insistence that circumcision is no longer the marker of covenant inclusion, etc., but not one mention that children are no longer automatically welcomed into the covenant with their believing parents. I suspect that the Baptist would likely point out the repeated emphasis on repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus as the new boundary marker in the New Testament, but to think that first century people would just do that math and come up with profession of faith baptism does not do justice to the training wheels of the Old Testament regarding God’s promises to our children and their inclusion. The Old Testament believers all knew that the true marker of true covenant fellowship was always repentance and faith (cf. Dt. 10:16, 30:6, Gal. 3:6-7, Heb. 11) and yet their children had always been welcome. Abraham was justified by faith and his children were included in the covenant. Emphasis on the necessity of repentance and faith isn’t enough to imply that children are now excluded until they have their own personal profession of faith.

Where are all the clarifying instructions that parents need to be sure of their children’s faith before bringing them to baptism? I know that some of my Baptist brothers wish that us Presbyterians would put far more emphasis on the word “call,” in Acts 2 (the promise is for you and for your children and as many as are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call…) as though Peter assumed that the festival crowd gathered in Jerusalem would simply look up their TULIP cards and realize that they couldn’t be sure of their infants’ “efficacious call” yet and never even thought to bring them to baptism. But anyone who has done much exegetical work on the word “call/calling” knows that it is used in some places to refer to decretal election efficacy but in other places it is used in a broader covenantal sense (e.g. Is. 41:9, 43:1-22, 45:4, Hos. 11:1-2, Mt. 20:16, Mt. 22:14, Rom. 11:29). In other words, even with an emphasis on the word “call” in Acts 2, why was there no need for clarification by Peter or an immediate controversy over the fact that the promise to children would no longer be marked by covenant signs and seals? Shouldn’t a shift that monumental between the covenants be even more present in the pages of the New Testament than whether Gentiles are now included?

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4 Reasons to Prefer Cultural Christianity & Nominal Christianity to Paganism

1. We should prefer a nominally Christian culture to paganism because the restraining of evil is always to be preferred to the open embrace and celebration of evil. While all sin is deadly for the soul and deserves the just wrath of God in Hell forever, not all sin is equally corrupting or harmful to individuals or a society. Lust in the heart is sinful adultery, but it is not as corrupting to an individual or society as actually committing adultery, homosexuality, or bestiality. While all lust is sin, and the wages of all sin is death, the corruption of a teenage boy looking at a Victoria Secret model really is very different from him coming across hardcore child porn. Likewise, hatred in the heart is sinful murder as our Lord taught; but actual physical murder does more harm and damage. While hypocrisy is a grave sin that leads to greater evils if left unchecked, it is still a less corrupting sin than the open and flagrant defiance of God’s laws. As Francois de La Rochefoucauld famously said, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” And better that culture than one in which vice feels no need to pay any tribute to virtue at all. Which incidentally means that I would argue that a nominally Christian culture is only possible where true Christian faith has a dominant influence in a culture. Nevertheless, suppression of evil is to be preferred to the open celebration of evil for the same reason that civil order is to be preferred to civil chaos, even if the order arises from mixed, unbelieving, or even hypocritical motives. 

2. We should prefer a nominally Christian culture to paganism because we are required by God to pray for the peace of our cities and to pray that we might live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty (Jer. 29:7, 1 Tim. 2:2). Of course the ultimate peace of our cities would be the true conversion of every individual in our cities to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the most quiet life would be one where everyone is regenerated. But the relative peace of our cities is found in their relative openness and conformity to God’s laws and ways, even if not done with pure motives from the heart. For example, while our nation has clearly not repented of our barbarous murder of preborn children, Christians should be rejoicing in the overturning of Roe. And the fact that a mainline presbyterian President and several Roman Catholic Supreme Court justices played major roles in that decision is an example of nominal Christian culture scoring a win over overt paganism. Anecdotally, many nominal Christians (who for example only attend church on Christmas and Easter) tend to lean more biblical when it comes to many social issues, even if inconsistently. Vague, external conformity to Christianity is better for the peace of nations and for the peaceable existence of Christians than unrestrained paganism.

3. We should prefer a nominally Christian culture to paganism because when the church is healthy and thriving, many nominal Christians come into more contact with the true gospel and come to true faith. We practice this when Christian parents raise their children going to church. Some of those children do not come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ until years later, but those years of “nominal” church attendance were not waisted. They were years of evangelism and preparation for the gospel. As I tweeted recently: “Fear of ‘cultural Christianity’ is the social-cultural equivalent of normalizing crisis conversion — the mistaken notion that you have to go through a period of rebellion before getting saved. But many come to Christ growing up going to church; we should want that for our nation.” Likewise, Christians frequently invite non-Christian friends to attend church, Bible studies, vacation Bible schools, Christian concerts, small groups, and I strongly doubt that any Christians seriously worry that this is bad for their non-Christian friends and neighbors or their churches or nation. The gospel works like leaven through a loaf, and that ordinarily takes time and contact. That time of external contact with the gospel is not bad but ordinarily good. We certainly know that if unbelievers hear the gospel clearly and reject it, it will go worse for them in the end in Hell (2 Pet. 2:21). But in the meantime, the fact that some non-Christians will attend church or Bible studies and to some extent conform their lives outwardly to some Christian norms is an evangelistic opportunity. This is to be preferred over open antagonism to Christianity where those opportunities are far fewer. It’s harder to share the gospel when the unbelievers are only shouting you down and hauling you off to the gulags — even though God has often still used that persecution to display His gospel and call unbelievers to Himself.

4. We should prefer a nominally Christian culture to paganism because it allows for the church and Christian families to do their work more freely. While it is true that nominal Christian cultures tempt many churches and families to laziness and apathy, it is still better to raise children and disciple new Christians with the culture’s general approval and support than in hiding and under persecution. We should rather live in a culture that allows churches to meet, build buildings, for Christian schools to operate openly, and for evangelism to take place unhindered. Of course, God has often been pleased to require His people to work in less than ideal circumstances, and there are special blessings for those endeavors – the underground church in North Korea and China are no doubt sustained by God’s grace for this mission. Yet, Christians should generally prefer to work in relatively more accepting cultures. If we could press a button today and the only options were leave America as it currently is (the decomposing corpse of a Christian culture) and becoming North Korea, Christians should not willingly choose North Korea. We should of course be willing for God to choose that situation for us and rejoice in that assignment, but we should not willingly choose it unless we are convinced that it is for our good and the good of the Kingdom. All things being equal, we should choose less persecution, more freedom for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of meeting openly as a church, doing evangelism, Christian education, and carrying out the Great Commission. If missionaries arrive on an island where cannibalism is practiced, with particularly vigorous appetites for strangers bearing some new religion, the first order of business is to somehow convince the cannibals to adopt a form of Christian nominalism, at least long enough to hear the gospel. And the missionaries should feel no tinge of guilt whatever if they suspect that the cannibals are embracing Christian notions of due process without having accepted Christ as their Savior.

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Six Principles for Raising Kids in a Pomosexual World

Notes for King’s Cross Church Special Men’s Forum

1. Faith vs. Fear: believe the promises of God found in Scripture. Jesus came to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Mal. 4). He came to bear the curse of Adam that has infected all our families. Jesus became the curse on the cross, so that the sins of our fathers and mothers, our sins and our children’s sins might be taken away. Believe the promises of the gospel. This kind of faith creates a home where the dominant tone is relief. If God is for you and for your family, then what can stand against you? And a family where joy and light are the dominant themes is a greenhouse that drives secret sins away. But if there’s something growing in the back of your proverbial pantry, that’s a perfect recipe for missing something big. Fear comes from guilt and shame. Deal with your guilt and shame; believe the gospel. Walk in joyful light. Light exposes darkness.

2. Read the whole Bible together as a family and discuss everything: you can’t read through the whole Bible and not address a number of topics relating to sexuality – we used this language with our kids when they were young (lay with, a man’s seed, strange woman — the “bad lady” who uses her beauty to try to trick or trap men — rape, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, etc.). Genesis 1-3 also clearly lays out the goodness of the human body, the image of God, the goodness of marriage, the origin of shame in sin and disobedience, and the promises of the gospel. But if you read the whole Bible together as a family, regularly, you will cover pretty much every topic that needs to be covered. Allow the Bible’s language to inform your language and create categories for young children which can then make conversations more in-depth and natural as the children come into adolescence. 

3. Celebrate feminine beauty, marriage, children – model that joyful fellowship in your marriage. You are commanded by the Bible to rejoice in the wife of your youth, and to rejoice in her beauty, her body. Your children should all know that you are into your wife. Without being inappropriate, you should hold and kiss your wife enough to occasionally make the kids feel slightly embarrassed. Tell your daughters they are beautiful and encourage them to practice feminine beauty; tell your sons that they must honor and respect feminine beauty. Practice this in how you require them to interact from early ages: no wrestling or fighting with girls, etc. Require your sons to be “gentlemen” and your daughters to be “ladylike.” Don’t tell your children that the magazine ladies are “ugly” or “gross.” Say that they are beautiful, but that their beauty should not be shared so cheaply with the world. Talk about marriage and children as the goal of dating/courtship from early years. The thought of pairing off, having crushes, “liking” so-and-so or dating before a marriageable age should seem foreign and silly. Don’t let this sort of thing go on at all.

4. Establish wise house rules – entertainment standards (be careful even with Rated G movies with foolish assumptions about pairing off, boyfriends, girlfriends, foolish parents), require space with siblings separate bedrooms, times/spaces for changing/bathing (especially between brothers and sisters), be very careful choosing friends, even extended family, giving and taking rides, parties, overnights (no slumber parties), minimize alone time and any time without multiple witnesses/accountability (both for temptations and false accusations or misunderstandings) – it’s not good for man to be alone, and folly is bound up in the heart of children. In our house, play time with friends was always out in the open, not back in bedrooms, etc. The general principle should be to practice protocols that would make secret sin almost impossible to happen, always having multiple people, publicity, and accountability in place (even with good friends/family). Don’t let your guard down simply because they are family, good friends, kirkers, homeschoolers, etc. Good house rules allow you to live without fear because they generally protect against being in situations where sin is likely to happen in secret. 

5. Electronic protocols – accountability software, parental protections, keep all screens and devices out in public. You need to give lots of hovering oversight when kids are young, slowly giving freedom and allowing room for wise use in teenage years. You want to be letting go of rules before kids leave the house, so they can practice complete freedom before they leave. They will be facing the real world when they leave, and if you only shield them, they will not be truly prepared. Focus on positive uses of electronics: reading the Bible, smart podcasts/sermons, connecting with extended family, etc. and guard against mind numbing, time-sucks and self-serving.

6. Confession, Forgiveness, and Accountability: Believe the gospel when things have not gone right, whether small sins or big sins. Never panic. Don’t freak out if your child or teenager expresses doubts about biblical sexuality or curiosity about sex or worldliness. The younger they are, you can simply inform them of the truth cheerfully and require it. If your little boy says he likes wearing dresses, tell him that he doesn’t and he’s a man who God has called to protect ladies. If your young daughter says she likes wrestling and wants to be a boy, tell her that she doesn’t, and God has made her a woman to be beautiful and make a glorious house for a man and be a mom. Cheerfully insist on this, and celebrate the steps they take to obey. Inform them in the same way that you require them to believe that the sky is blue, Jesus is God, and words have meaning.

The older they are, the more you must respectfully engage. Ask lots of questions. Where are they getting this desire from? Are they following unhelpful people on social media? Are their friends influencing them? Are they lonely, insecure, hurt, bitter? Pour on the love and the respect, and gently lead them to the truth. Clamping down, panicking, getting angry are all recipes for disaster and driving your children further away. Finally, remember the difference between forgiveness and trust. Jesus requires immediate and complete forgiveness of all sins (big and small) which restores true fellowship, but forgiveness does not mean that you leave them to flounder in their temptations and sins. You should ask them how you can help them repent and move forward in obedience; love leans into and (depending on the severity) requires accountability.

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