Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 20

School Choice & The Fat Thugs That Want Your Kids

Introduction
Whenever something sounds too good to be true, the rule of any sane person should be to consider it a scam until proven otherwise. When you get that email from that Saudi Arabian Prince wanting to share his inheritance with you, I’m no financial advisor or Middle Eastern political dilettante, but I advise you to use your trash button vigorously.

So when a movement begins picking up steam calling for “school choice,” thoughtful Christians and conservatives should have all their hackles done up for a party and their rhetorical guns at the ready. Remember, we live in a land that celebrates “choice,” and that means murdering babies. We live in a land that celebrates “choice,” and grooms little kids into sexual confusion and madness, secretly castrates teenagers without parental knowledge or consent, and demands you take injections of unspecified content because… shut up, you bigot. 

That’s the world we live in. So when people begin heralding a new found freedom of choice, freedom to choose whatever school you want your children to attend, dollars following kids, and so on, it would be good, healthy even, to get all of your defenses up, and maybe even pull out a few knives. This is the exact same scene of many crimes in our land. Your cursor should be hovering over that trash button.

Don’t get me wrong. I think we should exploit every opportunity to dismantle the government education monopoly. I think we should ride every bit of this wave to press for real educational freedom and parental sovereignty and responsibility, but conservative Christians have a bad habit of being manipulated through soundbites and ending up in worse positions than before. 

So Let’s Review
Currently, as far as I know, the way government education works in the United States is that everyone who owns property pays into a state fund, that state fund is augmented by various federal programs and subsidies, which are taken of course from federal income taxes, and then those moneys are redistributed to counties and school districts based on various state guidelines, including number of children enrolled in school.    

This means that parents who do not want to send their children to public schools, must pay into the government education programs via property taxes even though you don’t use the program, and don’t forget that if you pay rent, you are still paying into the program via your monthly rent. Your landlord is making sure that your rent covers all his property taxes. This is educational welfare, redistribution, and unjust taxation. Millions of Americans have defied this educational socialism and Marxism by bearing the costs of home schooling and private schooling on top of the taxes they are already paying for government schools they don’t use. This is why I tweeted recently:

One of the greatest modern rebellions has been the homeschool/private school movement: millions of Americans making the sacrifice to pay tuition/costs on top of their taxes, effectively paying tuition twice. The next step is getting our tax money back with no strings attached.

Which Brings Us To The So-Called “School Choice” Movement
I would love to be wrong about this. I would love to find out that some state really is letting parents completely opt out of government regulation, government coercion, and government redistribution for education. But as far as I know, the “school choice” programs being pushed are actually an expansion of government regulation and redistribution and no lessening of the foundational coercion involved in the unjust taxation. 

The most common program being championed by “school choice” advocates right now are ESA’s – Education Savings Accounts. In these programs, the state agrees to deposit money in a savings account for qualified parents to use on qualified educational programs. The key words in that last sentence are “state” and “qualified” and “qualified.” This tells you most of what you need to know. In these schemes, the “state” is still claiming sovereignty over the educational venture, and this is proven by the fact that the state is determining which families are “qualified” to have some of their money back and which educational programs are “qualified” to receive those monies. 

Now I’m happy to grant that there may be some short term wins for parents in these programs. A poor, single mom that wants to send her kids to a Classical Christian school suddenly has the tuition dollars and doesn’t feel trapped in the public school where her kids are being brainwashed all day long. I totally get it. But we are Christians, and we have to think further ahead than the next five minutes. 

But first, while I have all kinds of compassion for that single mom, I want to insist that a community that has not already given her all kinds of resources to pull her kids out of government schools and enroll them in a Christian option of her choice is a community that is not ready for a gush of greenbacks from the government teat. The community that has not already declared war on the communism inherent in government schools and made the great sacrifices to evacuate their children from those occupied territories is not a community that has proven to have the wisdom, discernment, foresight, or compassion necessary to see through this minefield. 

Second, consider the fallout of expanded government redistribution and regulation. We’ve already seen this in higher education. What happened over the last forty years with Pell grants and government loans? Our higher education system has gone to Hell. And I mean that literally. Even most of the so-called Christian colleges and universities are loaded up with Diversity Inclusion and Equity clowns. The current is so strong that even Grove City College, one of the only colleges in the nation that doesn’t take government money, is in the thick of controversy over diversity and woke policies. I know of a young woman personally who attended Grove City who was forced to leave during COVID because she refused to comply with their anti-science masking regime. 

Mass Compromise
What will the result be of government funding through ESAs? Mass compromise. Why? Because money ill-gotten corrupts. That money being put in your ESA? That’s blood money. Property taxes are an evil and immoral stain on our land since they imply that if you don’t pay taxes on the land and home that you “own,” they may be seized to pay for your back taxes, which essentially means that you are in a long term lease agreement with the government for your so-called property. So much for private property. 

The impact of these wicked laws is wide ranging, but landing on the elderly and others with fixed incomes the hardest. As communities grow and develop, home and property values tend to rise, and with values rising, taxes rise. An elderly widow whose husband faithfully provided for her will often find it difficult to continue paying rising property taxes and be forced to sell her family estate. This is nothing short of Ahab’s theft of Naboth’s Vineyard in slow motion. If Ahab offers to let you use some of Naboth’s vineyard for a personal garden, is it moral to take him up on that offer? 

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing that all taxation is theft. I’m simply arguing that taxation of property, with the implicit threat of seizing assets if you don’t pay, is highway robbery in a bureaucratic business suit, even if the measure passed by 99% of the vote. It’s never OK to demand someone pay you something they don’t want or use with the threat of stealing their stuff if they don’t pay you. 

Finally, everything the government funds ends up costing more and driving quality down. If you don’t think that will happen with ESAs there’s a Saudi Arabian prince I’d like to introduce you to. When money is more easily gotten, the pressure to raise prices increases. But when the money easily gotten is not based on real goods and services (real values), those price increases are simply inflation. And when you start down a path of incrementally accepting more money without a corresponding demand for increasing quality or quantity, you are already accepting a downgrade of quality. Again, I refer you to the American college scene, where billions of dollars are not only being spent to brainwash future teachers, doctors, and lawyers into believing Darwinian and Marxist lies, but they are also doing so with waterslides, climbing walls, jacuzzis, and dormitory amenities that keep STD rates high and virginity rates low (not to mention skyrocketing tuition rates). 

Conclusion
I’ve heard some proposing “school choice” in the form of tax credits. The plus side of tax credits would be relative lack of strings attached. The downside would still be the government pretending to have the authority to take our money in the first place. This would also likely continue to include some measure of redistribution since tax credits are often awarded based on income levels, granting larger credits to those with lower incomes. If tax credits were matched to actual taxation payments that would be even closer to giving people back the money stolen from them, but then why do we continue to allow our money to be taken in the first place? On what planet is it OK for the government to require you to pay for services that you object to, that you refuse, that you aren’t using? If Christians have gotten their heads around the need to defund Planned Parenthood because we object to our tax dollars funding the murder of little babies, why can’t we get our heads around the right of parents to decide how to spend their own money on the education of their own children? Why can’t we simply demand the right to opt out?

The goal of any real “school choice” must be complete parental sovereignty and freedom, and that means freedom from government coercion to pay into a system. While the government demands your money, all talk of “choice” is negotiating with thugs.

The cry and hue goes up that unless the state provides education, the poor will suffer, and the social and economic impact will be disastrous. But this really is ridiculous: government programs have the worst track records. They are bloated with regulations, red tape, and nuisance bureaucracy. The government insisting that if they don’t take care of education, the poor will suffer, is like an obese man insisting that if he doesn’t run the exercise and nutrition programs everyone will be sick and unhealthy. Just look at San Fransisco, Seattle, or Portland. Look at those Marxist utopian paradises. Our answer needs to simply be that we will take care of our own poor, thank you very much. You have done quite enough, Mr. Fat Ass Government. Get your greasy paws off our schools (and kids). 

I suspect that there are backroom deals being made with these “school choice” programs. I suspect that Big Tech and Big Business are somewhere in those backrooms pulling strings. Education is a massive business (like health care), and if you don’t think there’s corruption involved have I told you that I’m a Saudi Arabian prince with a gold mine I need to unload? While there is some resistance on the Left that might make “school choice” seem like a real suckerpunch to their beloved Democrat training centers, er, I mean schools, Christians must understand that they do not have any real “school choice,” until they have full and complete choice over how to spend their own money for their own children. 

If we’re going to make some kind of deal, the deal has to include the right of parents to opt out of the government education system. Since the god of Big Tech and Big Government is Mammon, I would suggest trying to broker a deal between some corporate fat cats and government fat cats. Could we convince the true believers in government education to let us leave this Egypt if they could give all their teachers a raise and every student a laptop and lifetime supply of condoms because Google is buying a few seats on the State Education board?

Short of a radical gospel Reformation in our land, we need to be thinking and praying strategically. Can we offer them a deal they can’t refuse so that we can get out? But convincing them to let us use some of the money they stole isn’t really a jailbreak; it’s more like building an addition on the jail and letting you invite your school to use the new “wing.” 

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

Joseph & Jesus

At the end of Genesis, Joseph faintly pictures what Adam should have done and become, and in so doing he pictures Jesus, the second Adam, the last Adam, come to restore the human race. Where Adam listened to the voice of his wife, Joseph refused to listen to Potiphar’s wife enticing him. Likewise, Jesus did not listen to the temptations of the Devil. Where Adam was exiled and made to labor and toil the ground until he died, Joseph was sold into slavery, and then thrown into prison for false accusations, but then he was raised to the right hand of Pharaoh. Likewise, Jesus was rejected by His own, falsely accused, and crucified, but God raised Him from the dead, and He is now seated at the Father’s right hand forever. 

And to the significance of this table, where Adam was barred from the tree of life, fellowship with God, and made to labor for his food, Joseph provided bread for the world during a severe, seven year famine. And likewise, Jesus has given Himself as the Bread of Life, for the life of the world. Where sin and death is a constant famine, Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and He invites us to His table week after week: to eat and drink and fellowship for no cost. Come everyone who thirsts, come buy and eat without money, without price (Is. 55:1). 

In many ways, we are like Joseph’s treacherous family, and while we don’t like to admit it, we would have been just like Jesus’ disciples, fleeing for our lives and denying Him while the cock crows. And we have in many ways in our thoughts, in our attitudes, in our words, and in our actions. But Jesus is the Greater Joseph, and He recognizes us despite all our sin. He recognizes us as His own family. And sets a table for us, and the table is full of grace, forgiveness, and blessing. Are you hungry? Then come. Do you need grace? Then come. We are all a little like old Jacob full of fear and despair, and this table is like the wagons that Joseph sent out to his father. Here it is proclaimed to us: Jesus is alive. He is risen from the dead. Come, there is plenty of grace, plenty of bread, plenty of wine, and He has prepared a place for you. 

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Steven Crowder, the Daily Wire, and the Ethics of Tapping

Introduction
So Steven Crowder has collided with Jeremy Boreing and the Daily Wire. What began as what appeared to be what one friend called Crowder’s “Jerry McGuire Moment” (which I admit I had to look up to understand the reference), quickly turned a bit ugly with the revelation of an apparently secret recording of a private conversation between Crowder and DW CEO Jeremy Boreing discussing differing philosophies of doing business. 

In what follows, I would like to briefly outline the case for Crowder’s point, and then I want to address the ethics of conversation recording. 

Crowder’s Point
First, Crowder’s initial claim was that “Big Con” is in bed with Big Tech. Reviewing an anonymous contract offer, Crowder warned in a video that provisions for salary cuts based on censorship from Big Tech companies (such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) essentially leave conservative commentators out to dry on their own. Jeremy Boreing came out shortly thereafter explaining that the contract was an initial start-the-conversation offer with Crowder and he was happy to claim it as his own. Boreing argued that something like the salary cuts for losing social media platforms is necessary simply because of the math involved in the business venture. A platform like Daily Wire has to be able to count on certain amounts of revenue from social media in order to pay its partners; if that revenue dries up, they won’t be able to pay their partners, hence the proposed pay cuts.  

I get the math, and on a purely business level, I understand why it seems like a reasonable, utilitarian proposal. There’s nothing monstrous or insidious about that sort of deal, all by itself. However, I’m definitely sympathetic to Crowder’s overall point, which he claims was never about the money but simply about Big Con (Big Conservatism) standing up for free speech and pushing back against Big Tech. If we’re going to have multi-million dollar conservative news and commentary outlets, what good are they if they are not actively pushing back against Big Tech and seeking to protect their partners from cancel culture? Maybe Jeremy Boreing thinks he’s playing the long game, but I happen to think they are already halfway over the waterfall that will soon take them down the FOX News drain. Denise McAlister is on record claiming that she was fired from the Daily Wire for being outspoken about the sinfulness of homosexuality. Ben Shapiro reportedly told her that he didn’t want to rock that boat because they happen to be big donors/sponsors. 

I’ve also written previously that Jeremy Boreing’s razor ad was a pretty significant faceplant: pushing back against woke cancel culture by weaponizing proto-woke motifs isn’t a winning strategy. While I don’t really care if Jeremy wants to joke around about being the Daily Wire “god king,” strutting around his offices with four boobs (two on either side of him) is what got us here in the first place. And by “here,” I mean that you cannot objectify women, turning them into objects to be used for “conservative” ends, and then complain when some men decide they would like to cut them off teenage girls or put some fake ones on themselves. I certainly grant that men lusting after women is more “natural” than men lusting to be women or deform women. But that’s like saying it’s more natural to steal steak than trash. Stealing is still a sin, and sin is the kind of poison that always destroys and warps. Sin is insanity, and there aren’t any brakes on that car. Why was Boreing cool with his Razor Ad? Because sex sells. It makes money. Of course, Boreing thinks he’s making conservatism sexy, and I’m all for the alternative economy and pushing back against woke razors. But you can’t put a little bit of eyeliner on and insist that you’re sticking it to the Drag Queens. Even if all your fans go along with it, that’s still utilitarianism. Doing whatever “works” is not taking a sledgehammer to leftism; it’s actually getting a sledgehammer ready for leftism. 

Finally, Crowder’s point seems legitimate to me because of Jordan Peterson’s interview with Dave Rubin concerning his boutique, test-tube “family.” The atrocity of that conversation, as Peterson’s grand welcome to the Daily Wire still astonishes me. And as I noted at the time, it was right around the same time that the Daily Wire announced that they were working on children’s programing since Disney has gone woker than an angry Karen at a BLM rally in Seattle. Given the way Peterson handled Rubin’s homosexuality, claims of “marriage” to his sodomite lover, the rented uteruses, the eggs purchased from a Sears catalogue, and his freezers full of breastmilk, I believe Jeremy Boreing and the Daily Wire also still owe the whole world an apology for presenting that steaming pile as anything close to conservative. 

The juxtaposition of that interview with the announcement of children’s programing colored me nonplussed. The same Daily Wire that had just stroked its three thoughtful philosophical chin hairs contemplating the purchase of eggs, renting of wombs, and freezers full of breastmilk would like to provide children’s programming. At this point, they have lost all credibility (Matt Walsh’s documentary notwithstanding) on the subject of what is a woman, a family, a marriage, children, or appropriate content. 

Thus far, my concerns with the Daily Wire, and why Crowder’s warning that Big Con might be getting sodomized by Big Tech seems reasonable to me. Sorry, let me say it nicer. Big Tech might be buying Big Con’s eggs and inseminating them in test tubes in order to grow good liberal citizens in the Daily Wire’s rented womb, looking a little conservative (with cleavage like their mom), but definitely ideologically of their father. 

I have no idea if these sorts of compromises are even on Crowder’s radar. But I would hope they are, and if they aren’t, maybe he has his own list of free speech compromises.

The Ethics of Secret Recordings
At the same time, unless another shoe drops, and some massive scandal is revealed at the Daily Wire, it looks to me that Crowder made a major blunder in secretly recording a phone call he had with Jeremy Boreing about the Daily Wire business model and releasing snippets of it publicly. I think Crowder was free to talk about his concerns with the proposed contract and business philosophy, but recording someone without their knowledge or consent is an act of war. Recording someone without their knowledge or consent is to identify them as your enemy. 

This is because recording someone without their knowledge or consent is a form of deception. When we talk to one another, we generally assume the context of our conversations, and it is a form of deception to allow someone to assume one context (friendly, informal discussion/debate) when another is actually in mind (every word is being examined, fishing for dirt/sabotage). Of course if you want to ask for permission to record or announce that a recording is in progress for the sake of keeping a faithful record of the conversation, that is certain permissible, and can be perfectly friendly, but that openness keeps the conversation friendly because it is honest, straightforward, and not at all duplicitous. But secret recordings are duplicitous. 

Of course in a world of modern technology, it is incredibly easy to record or be recorded. We often joke that with iPhones and Siri and Alexa, all of our homes are bugged, all of our conversations are being recorded. I mean, we’ve all had the eerie experience of talking to someone about spatulas, and then five minutes later, scrolling on Facebook there’s an ad for spatulas. I mean, it’s not even very subtle. 

Nevertheless, in the ordinary course of things, when you call someone up on the phone or go to coffee with them, even when you’re negotiating a potential business deal, good faith, means, well, good faith. It means that while people certainly may have multiple loyalties and responsibilities to juggle, what is being discussed and debated is what is being discussed and debated. 

As a pastor, I’ve had situations where an aggrieved spouse has secretly recorded conversations or arguments with their spouse. While I can sympathize with the instinct (e.g. I want my pastor to hear exactly what she/he sounds like in private), unless we are talking about actual criminal activity that needs to be taken to the police, it is almost always like pulling out a nuke at a fist fight. Don’t do it. While a relationship can be severely strained by arguments, losing tempers, harsh words, people do not understand the damage that can be done by duplicity, by deceptive recording. It is one thing to simply disagree, to disagree vehemently. It is another thing to submarine all trust. 

“A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle” (Prov. 18:19).

The only other category the Bible admits would be lies/deception that trick people into doing the right thing. We see this with Jacob and Rebecca deceiving Isaac, tricking him into obeying God and giving Jacob the blessing. Tamar, the daughter in-law of Judah, deceives her father in-law into providing for her, and there are some court intrigues under David, where Joab sends the wise old woman in to plead before David, and later, even Bathsheba’s plea for the throne for Solomon included some sleight of hand, calculated to prod David to do what needed to be done. But that doesn’t appear to be what is going on in the Crowder/Daily Wire collision. This appears to me to be a legitimate conflict of visions and principles that got personal. The collision would have already made the personal relationships that existed more strained as it is, but I think Crowder’s decision to record a private conversation and release excerpts of that conversation needlessly punched below the belt. 

Conclusion
So I have sympathy for Crowder’s concerns, and structurally, I actually agree that Daily Wire has a business model that will long term suck them into the big money liberal vortex (if it hasn’t already). While many of the players and contributors have personal principles of conservatism (which I’m very grateful for!), the fundamental ideology governing the business model is a right-leaning libertarianism and utilitarianism, which is ultimately a humanistic cancer in our society. It’s great to have the libertarians as co-belligerents against bloated, overweening government, and on many policies, we can agree, since biblical conservatism really does envision a small, limited civil government and great freedom for individuals, families, and associations. But if we do not have a structural commitment to the biblical principles of liberty (freedom from the coercion of Big Tech, crony capitalism, etc.), it will not last long. 

And for the same reason, I would urge Crowder to admit that the secret recording was below the belt, unethical, unkind, and apologize. If he really believes in conservative values, then that would prove it. Otherwise, as it stands, it appears that Crowder has employed some of the same utilitarian worldview in the name of conservatism and calls his whole complaint into question, and that would explain why Republicans and conservatives in general can’t have nice things. 

One last thought: some of you may wonder why it wouldn’t be ethical to consider Daily Wire an enemy since they already appear to be so compromised on homosexuality and eugenics. Well, I would grant that someone might conclude that (although I don’t, since folks like Walsh and Knowles seem to be holding a principled biblical line, albeit as Roman Catholics), but even if someone has concluded that they are enemies, I think good faith includes the honor of actually declaring war. Don’t say you’re still friends despite this disagreement and then stab your “friend” in the back publicly. That isn’t good faith. If you’ve concluded that your former friends are not friends anymore but actually enemies, then say so. Tell them directly. Then feel free to record every conversation you have. In this world there will be fights, and there will be wars, but we are Christians, and so we believe in just wars and clean fights. 

Godly Introspection vs. Morbid Introspection

One of the instructions we are given at this table is to examine ourselves: “But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Cor. 11:28-29). In the surrounding context we learn that the Corinthians were coming to the table with factions and divisions, some were eating while others were not, and some were even getting drunk, and so they were eating and drinking unworthily, and the bread and wine were not a blessing but a curse. 

So we need to heed this warning too, but we need to heed this warning without falling into other ditches. One of those ditches is what might be called morbid introspection. We believe in godly, joyful introspection, but we reject and warn against morbid introspection. What’s the difference? The difference is faith in God versus faith in yourself. Think of your heart like a house: Morbid introspection imagines that in order to do the job right, you have to explore your “house-heart” pretending that Christ is not there. This is like insisting that you have to explore a house blindfolded in the middle of the night. But Godly introspection begins and ends with your eyes fixed on Christ in your heart the whole time. These two approaches will result in two very different results: we might call morbid introspection the haunted house approach and the godly introspection approach the happy home approach. And the difference is whether you are keeping your eyes open to the light of Christ or not. 

In godly introspection, you should regularly find things that need tidying, sins that need confessing, but the house is not in danger of being condemned because Christ has taken up residence in your house. Christ is in your heart. He is there, and He makes all the difference. But if he is not there, or if you insist on only pretending He is not there, coming to this table will be a regular terror. So, let a man examine himself, beginning with fixing his eyes on Christ. Is Christ there? Is Christ in You? Now with Christ in You ask Him to show you anything you need to deal with. But do it joyfully because Christ is with you. He is the Light of the World, and He is in your hearts. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

Worship is Warfare

Worship is warfare. The Apostle says that we are to take up the full armor of God in order to do battle with principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 6). Hebrews says that we have not come to a mountain that can be touched, but to the Heavenly Mt. Zion, the city of the Living God, to the saints made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, whose blood speaks better things than that of Abel (Heb. 12). And from this Mountain, God shakes Heaven and Earth. He shakes all things so that what cannot be shaken will remain. God is the consuming fire that engulfs this Heavenly Mt. Zion, and therefore we worship with reverence and awe. 

In the Book of Revelation, John is granted a vision of the heavenly places by the Holy Spirit on the Lord’s Day. And what he sees is worship in the heavenly places. He sees the elders falling down in worship. He sees the four living creatures crying Holy, Holy, Holy! He sees an eschatological vision of the purified churched, a myriad of peoples from every tongue and tribe worshiping the Lamb who was slain, and as this worship takes place, we see judgments falling on the earth. The horses of God’s judgement riding forth, the cups of God’s wrath poured out, and the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, as a bride adorned for her Wedding Feast. 

Therefore, the central thing we do every week is gather for worship here. We gather here in order to struggle against the principalities and powers in heavenly places. We gather here, lifted up by the Spirit on the Lord’s Day to join the heavenly hosts of angels and spirits of just men made perfect, in order to ask God to shake everything that can be shaken, all the sin and idols that remain in us and all the sin and idols out in the world, so that we, like Moses may have the light of Christ shine on our faces, changing us from glory to glory, that we might be sent back out into the world to take dominion for His glory, asking God that His Kingdom might come and His will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. 

Photo by Tintinburgh on Unsplash

How to Be Happy

Introduction
Some Christians just can’t seem to be happy. Sometimes there are real medical issues at work, chemical or hormonal imbalances in play, but sometimes it’s mysterious. When there are no obvious medical issues, we should not relegate the spiritual to some other realm. The state of your heart before God is closely related to your happiness, your joy, your peace. How could it not be? The God of the Universe made you, and your greatest comfort and joy is in Him. As the Great Augustine said, ‘Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Him.’ 

What Makes People Sad?
“A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed” (Prov. 15:13). And what makes a heart sorrow? Sin. Hard providences like the loss of dear friends or death also cause grief, but when your heart is clean before God, the Spirit comforts and refreshes and the sting slowly subsides. But I’m talking about the gnawing, aching darkness of unexplainable depression. The Bible says that one of the first things we should consider is whether we have unconfessed sin. 

Psalm 32:1 says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” But the word translated “blessed,” could just as easily be translated “happy.” Happy is everyone whose sin is forgiven and covered. Happy is the man against whom the Lord does not reckon his iniquity (Ps. 32:2). David knows this from experience, and he remembers the time before that: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” When David refused to confess his sins, his bones ached, and every day was a dark downer. 

Now when Christians get into these depression funks, when they have a backlog of bitterness, resentment, or other unconfessed sins, and everything goes dark, they often begin to question whether they are really Christians, whether they are really saved. And that is certainly a question that should be asked on occasion (2 Cor. 13:5). But in general when people have been walking with God and then find themselves drifting into a sad, dark place, this is actually not a sign that they aren’t saved; rather it is a sign that they are saved. David knows this, and he says so in the next verse in Psalm 32: “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” (Ps. 32:4). Whose hand was heavy upon David? God’s hand was heavy upon him. It was God who was making David feel so bad, so awful. And that means that God was with David. But God loves His blood-bought people so much that He refuses to let them be happy when they are clinging to their sin. 

In Hebrews 12 is says, quoting Proverbs, “For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives” (Heb. 12:6). When you are disciplined, God is treating you like sons (Heb. 12:7). In fact, it says that if you are not disciplined, if you are not chastised when you sin, then that’s when you should wonder if you are really a son (Heb. 12:8). God’s fatherly discipline is not pleasant but painful for the moment, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have bene trained by it (Heb. 12:11). 

God disciplines his children and gives them temporary pain and sadness so that they will confess their sins and come back out into the light, back into the joy and fellowship, so that they will be happy. You cannot keep your sin and be happy at the same time. And we are the kind of stubborn creatures who cling to sins for a while, preferring them and our sadness, to the freedom and happiness that God offers us in Jesus. 

But the sadness is usually a proof that we really do belong to Him, and He is treating us as sons, not letting us get away with sin, not letting us be happy in our sin. A true sign of an old, dead heart, of reprobation, is someone who feels fine, who feels good even in his sin. I do not believe that they have true happiness or true joy, and even in those situations, there is still a prick of truth buried somewhere in their conscience. But there is such a thing as a hard heart and a seared conscience, and those are people that God has given over to their sin. They lie and do not remember. They steal and do not notice. They commit adultery and wipe their mouths and say, ‘I have done nothing wrong’ (Prov. 30:20, cf. Rom. 1:24).

When David finally confessed his sins, God forgave him (Ps. 32:5), and that forgiveness was like a high rock above the surging waves of anxiety, fear, and sorrow (Ps. 32:6). The forgiveness of God is like a hiding place, a shelter, a warm home from the cold, a fortress of safety from every threat (Ps. 32:7). And David closes the Psalm summarizing the whole point: “Many sorrows are to the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust the Lord” (Ps. 32:10). And the implication is clear: those who are surrounded by the steadfast love of Lord are happy. 

So, are you struggling with recurring darkness, sorrow, lethargy, apathy? There may be other factors at work, but why not start with what the Bible says? Why not start with checking to see if you have a clean heart? Are you harboring anything? Are there any closets in your heart that you dare not open? And sins shoved into some corner, that you’re hoping will just go away? Is God’s hand heavy upon you because He wants you to be free? Is God disciplining you as a son because He loves you and does not want you to keep holding on to that old sin?

Two Final Thoughts
First, sometimes Christians try to confess or start to confess their sin but they don’t actually complete the task. So the pastor suggests confession as a solution to their sadness, and they say, ‘I already tried that and it didn’t work.’ But often the confession was thrown up to the ceiling in desperation, but it wasn’t a thorough and obedient repentance. It’s not enough to merely feel bad about sin. “For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly sorrow produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10). So it’s fully possible to feel bad about sin and really feel sorry, and for everything to only get worse. It’s not enough to just feel bad; you have to confess your sin to the Lord and anyone you have sinned against and repent. 

Repentance means turning, even turning around. Let’s say you’ve been angry with your wife or your husband for a long time. Maybe it was one thing they did or said years ago, or maybe it was a pattern of sins over a long time. And sometimes you think about your bitterness and you feel bad about it, and maybe you even confess that one moment of bitterness. But Hebrews says that bitterness is a root that springs up and defiles many (Heb. 12:15). In other words, you might have confessed one branch of that ugly prickle plant, but have you uprooted the whole knotted, oozing, and spikey thing? And in its place, have you planted flowers? 

Repentance means confessing, asking for forgiveness, and having put off that old rotting man, putting on the new living man. Have you confessed the whole thing, have you dug down as deep as you can go, and pulled the whole thing up by the roots, hating it all, kill it all, and put grace in its place? Or have you been like Bilbo the Hobbit with the ring, saying that you will leave it behind, but still mindlessly putting it back in your pocket? If you’ve been struggling with bitterness toward your spouse for sometime, chances are good that they’ve felt it, even if it’s been under the surface. You need to confess it to them, and then you need to thank them for being your wife/your husband, tell them you love them, and tell them that you will be endeavoring to love, honor, and cherish them from now on, just like you promised in your wedding vows. The old habit may still pop up occasionally after that, but if you’ve pulled out the beast by the roots, you can pull out the occasional little weed, and you’ll be right back in the joy. But if all you ever do is pluck off the end of one gnarly branch, the whole spikey weed is still sitting there in your heart; so of course you’re still not happy. You didn’t do the whole job. 

Lastly, a word about introspection. There’s a particular temptation for some to spend an inordinate amount of time examining the soil of their hearts in search of weeds, and they struggle with bouts of anxiety and depression because they worry that they haven’t really dealt with all of their sin, or maybe they haven’t dealt with it fully or completely. First, I recommend the 30 second rule which is sort of like when you drop food and pick it up quickly. Except, it’s not really like that at all. The only thing it has in common with that rule is the 30 seconds part. But what I mean is that if you’re one of those introspective types, and you’ve confessed some sin around 15 times but it’s still gnawing at you and there’s a little black rain cloud pouring on your heart, you should ask the Lord to name what the sin is that you have not yet confessed. And give it 30 seconds and no more. The Holy Spirit really does convict believers of sin, but the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. The Holy Spirit convicts believers of sin so that they can confess quicly, repent, and get back into the joy. The Holy Spirit gives us the peace of Christ. In other words, if you’re sitting under that little black rain cloud for hours or days, that isn’t the Holy Spirit. That’s the Devil. That’s Satan, the Accuser. God does not put His children on a spit to roast them over the fire of the Spirit. That’s just not His way. 

But, one of you will say, but isn’t His hand heavy upon His people sometimes because they won’t confess their sins? Yes, but He does that for sins they know about. God’s hand is heavy upon those who are intentionally keeping silent, who refuse to confess sins they know they should confess. He doesn’t do that for vague feelings of guilt. The Spirit convicts us of concrete sins so that we can confess them immediately, get forgiven, and have peace and joy again quickly. 

Frequently, introspection is a form of sadistic hubris and pride. Frequently, the introspectionist is obsessed with himself/herself, and you can tell because most of their sentences begin with: I, me, myself, I, I, I, my, my, me. But you aren’t that important, and your self obsession with your feelings is often stealing from those whom God has called you to love and serve. There is also often a form of pride in refusing to believe and receive the forgiveness of God. Did you confess your sin? Then God has removed it as far as the East is from the West. Stop asking for forgiveness. He has buried at the bottom of the sea. He doesn’t remember it anymore. Stop bringing it up. But when you climb on to the spit of your memory and insist on roasting for an afternoon or an evening or another week or month, you are arrogantly insisting to God that you know better than Him, that the blood of Jesus is not enough for you. Your sin is so bad and so important, that it requires some additional suffering that you are now providing for yourself. But that is of course ludicrous. You are not God; you are not Jesus. And you are terrible god, a terrible savior. And who do you think you are, telling God, “no.” He said that you are forgiven and clean. He told you to walk free with your head held high. He told you to shut up and smile because His grace is sufficient for you, because the blood of Jesus is enough. It is finished.  

Conclusion
So do it. Smile. Preach the gospel to your heart, to your soul. Believe in the cross and resurrection. Confess your sins (the real ones), and maybe confess your introspection or prideful self-obsession, receive the forgiveness of God, and then walk in obedience. Don’t look down, don’t look back. Look to Christ, look ahead, look up, and remember that Christ is all. Christ is God. We are not that important; we are not the saviors of the world. And therefore, we are free to just be ordinary people, ordinary people who confess their sins regularly and therefore have clean hearts. And that is how to be happy. 

Photo by Matt Duncan on Unsplash

Clean Hearts & Blessed Fountains

Biblical Sexuality Sunday
Prov. 5:1-23

Opening Prayer: Our Father, we are raising children in a culture that increasingly hates your design for human sexuality, for the glory of being made male and female. But we know that only You are our fortress; only You can protect us and our children and grandchildren. So we ask for that protection now, and we ask that You would protect us by causing Your Word to do its good work in us now, so that we would be safe from the lies and allures of the world. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Introduction
In January 2022, the Canadian government enacted Bill C-4, effectively criminalizing Christian preaching, teaching, and counseling that upholds Biblical morality for all sexuality. It specifically prohibits “conversion therapy” and defines that therapy as any practice, treatment, or service that seeks to call individuals to embrace the body God created them with and covenant marriage, with a penalty of up to five years in prison. It also condemns historic, biblical teaching on sexuality as “myths.” 

A number of faithful men have called for the pastors of Canada to preach messages annually in direct defiance of that law. We, along with many American pastors, are joining them to stand in solidarity with them. With the recent passage of the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act,” American churches have even more reason to stand with our faithful Canadian brothers and to exhort and warn our own American leaders from going down this same path. 

Here in this text, we are given an example of a faithful father teaching and warning his children, and his son in particular, to spot the deadly allures of sexual confusion and sin, and to pursue and rejoice in one woman in the fear of God. 

The Text: “My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding: that thou mayest regard discretion and that thy lips may keep knowledge…” (Prov. 5:1-23). 

Summary of the Text
Solomon warns his son to listen to his father closely in order to stay far away from the seductive lips of the strange woman whose feet go down to Hell (Prov. 5:1-8). That path is paved with regret, sadness, sickness, and poverty (Prov. 5:9-14). Instead, the son is instructed to love the life God has given him and rejoice in the wife of his youth (Prov. 5:15-20). God sees all things, and He has fashioned the world such that a man hangs himself with his own sins and folly (Prov. 5:21-23). 

Inescapable Discipleship
There is no neutrality anywhere; every square inch of the universe is claimed by Christ. And therefore, every human moment is either submitted to that Lordship or else it is defying that Lordship. This means that children are growing up either being taught that Christ is Lord of everything, or not. This is why God required Israel to teach their children that the Lord is One God and to love Him with singular devotion all day long and everywhere (Dt. 6:4-9). This is what the New Testament calls “the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). This nurture and admonition includes everything the Bible says about human sexuality. This means that whatever any human authority says, we must obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29). This applies to all men, but it applies particularly to our children.

And so we declare with our Canadian brothers and sisters that we will not comply with Canadian decrees that forbid our obedience to King Jesus, and we warn our American authorities of the same: You are not god; you are not our Creator; you are certainly not our Savior. We will continue to joyfully obey our Lord Jesus Christ. We will continue to cheerfully teach what the Bible says: that God has created us immutably male and female from conception, and that sexual union is only blessed in the covenant bond of marriage between one man and one woman for life. 

Life or Death
The basic choice before us and our children is: life or death? The path of all sexual confusion and immorality leads to death; sexual obedience is the path of life (Prov. 5:5-6). Of course the enemies of God and of His word, have begun framing the question the same way. In a recent FOX segment, a so-called “conservative” family was interviewed that said they had decided to let their little girl pretend she was a boy (she’s now a teenage) because they said they would rather have “a living son than a dead daughter.” So they frame this as a life or death decision. And therefore, the fundamental question is: will we trust the Word God or the word of man?

This same choice is between, on the one hand: productivity, fruitfulness, and joy, and on the other hand: futility, barrenness, and sorrow (Prov. 5:10-14). Sexual obedience begins by submitting with gratitude to the biology God has given, as well as rejoicing in the respective assignments and glories that come with your body. And from the earliest ages, honoring those differences with all modesty and purity and joy. This requires joyfully teaching boundaries and enforcing them. This should be done in faith (not fear), trusting that what you’re actually insisting on is the natural goodness of the created order, like teaching them to walk or talk or sing. Require your sons and daughters to treat one another differently. Do not let your girls wrestle/fight their brothers, or your sons to wrestle/fight your daughters. Cheerfully insist on creational differences; and if they tell you otherwise, cheerfully insist that God requires this. Establish wise protocols in your home to protect your children: girls bedrooms off limits; separate baths/showers; modesty in the home. And without being paranoid, don’t be foolish with friends or extended family. Just because “we’re all Christians,” doesn’t mean we don’t still have sins and temptations. Protect one another. My family doesn’t do sleepovers because nothing good happens with kids after 10pm. If you are going to have boarders, make sure clear protocols are in place. 

All of these protocols should include lots of healthy physical affection, compliments, and good humor – between parents and children, as well as husband and wife. The central “well of life” in a family is the affection, respect, and loyalty between a man and his wife (Prov. 5:15-19). Whatever you are saying, you are either confirming or contradicting by your marriage. The strongest protection from the Devil and all predators and lies is the unity of husband and wife (1 Cor. 7:5, Eph. 4:26-27). 

Applications
Run from all temptation: Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife (Gen. 39:12). Jesus says to cut off the hand that causes you to sin, pluck out the eye (Mt. 5:29). It’s striking that He says this again, specifically when He warns against causing little ones to stumble (Mt. 18:6-10). Run from sexual temptation, but also run from all bitterness, wrath, and strife in your home that may cause your children to stumble. 

Repent of all your sins: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God… For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God… Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry… put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:1-10). 

Sin deforms the image of God; repentance in Christ reforms and restores the image of God. But Christian repentance is impossible apart from regeneration. You cannot “mortify therefore” unless you have been raised with Christ. But if you have risen with Christ, then you are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and repentance is simply agreeing that all of your sin really is dead. And if it is dead, then you are clean and free. Full repentance includes confession to God, people sinned against, and new obedience. 

Clean hearts see more clearly than dirty hearts. Sin-laden hearts have eyes with logs in them, and you can’t see dangers clearly and know how to avoid them, whether for yourself or your children (Mt. 7:3-5). There are several biblical principles for wise and faithful parenting (e.g. faith, joy, obedience, fellowship), but parenting is a lot more like cooking than a math problem. There is a general recipe to follow, but depending on a number of details, your taste must be well trained to know what is needed next. And that is only possible with clean hearts. 

The central thing clean hearts see is Jesus. This isn’t me saying: get your heart clean so you can see Jesus. This is me proclaiming to you Christ crucified for sinners. Christ was crucified for your sins: for your sexual sins, for your parenting sins, for your sins as children and siblings. Your sins were crucified with Christ; you were crucified with Christ. See all of your guilt, all of your filth nailed to His cross, and then see Him risen from the dead and your sin are no more. If you glance down now, you will see that your heart is clean. And now you can see clearly because You see Christ.

Photo by Daria Volkova on Unsplash

Contemporary Christian LARPing & Worship that Really Hits

Introduction
If I were moving to a new town to establish a Christian outpost, the first thing to do would be to establish faithful Christian worship. When Abraham was promised the land of Canaan, He began building altars (Gen. 12:7-8). Faithful worship is the cornerstone of Christian civilization. Many of the early medieval cities were originally monasteries, and whatever the confusions of monasticism and asceticism (and there were many), those places of worship, over centuries became powerhouses of education and commerce, wealth and influence. It is no accident that the Protestant Reformation grew out of the classical Christian education and Biblical scholarship that flourished in those centers of worship. 

One of the great immaturies of many modern Christians has been their childishness in thinking that they can take a job in some city without any knowledge or plan for a church. A Christian is someone who has surrendered everything to Christ. A Christian is someone who has taken up his cross to follow Jesus. And Jesus said that He came to establish His Church on the rock of Peter’s confession that He is the Christ, and the promise that attended the establishment of that church is that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it (Mt. 16). While Christians puzzle over what has happened to the Christian roots of the West, perhaps we should begin here where Jesus specifically told us He established the principle assault on Hell itself. 

So, where did Christ establish His church? The answer is at the gates of Hell. Jesus did not say that the gates of Heaven would not be overthrown by Hell. He said the gates of Hell will not be able to stand against the assault of the church. In other words, the church is in an offensive not defensive position. And He put us at the gates of Hell so it would be hard for us to miss the target. But we have substituted many alternatives to this plan anyway. Many Christians have substituted personal evangelism, or private devotions, or good intentions, or community activism, or pro-life ministry, or political engagement for the specific thing that Jesus promised to use to push back the gates of Hell: the church. 

The church is the gathered assembly of God’s people for worship, the celebration of the sacraments (Lord’s Supper and baptism), and discipleship and discipline. A hundred years ago, in 1923, Gresham Machen wrote, “a remarkable change has come about within the last seventy-five years. The change is nothing less than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant view of life. Seventy-five years ago, Western civilization, despite inconsistencies, was still predominantly Christian; today it is predominantly pagan” (Christianity and Liberalism, 65). 

It is not at all accidental or irrelevant that as the Church rejected God’s plan for driving back the gates Hell, we have ended up with this predominantly pagan view of life. In particular, we have substituted a foolhardy childish worship for the glorious worship of the saints. We have substituted praise choruses and rock bands and TED talks for militant congregational hymns and psalms and the ungarbled Word spoken plainly from pulpits. One Anglican bishop once said, “Everywhere Paul went, riots broke out; everywhere I go, they serve tea.” When’s the last time a church was considered a real threat to the pagan way of life around it? When’s the last time the establishment of Christian worship was clearly seen to threaten the pagan businesses and politics, turning the whole world upside down (Acts 17:6)? 

Thus Saith the Lord
At the center of what must be established in order to build and rebuild a mature Christian culture is a fierce commitment to all of Scripture for all of life, beginning with obedient Christian worship. And this means a return to doing what the Bible says. Whatever someone may say about obedience to the Bible, if the key factor in Sunday morning worship is the felt needs of the people, the emotional experience of the people, or the professional presentation of the leaders, then another god is being served.

“… Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may worship God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:18-29). This is what the New Testament says about Christian worship. While there is actually plenty to glean from the Old Testament about the nature of God and the nature of Christian worship, let’s just start here in the book of Hebrews. 

Hebrews says that Christian worship is not gathered at Mt. Sinai – where the mountain could be touched and burned with fire – where Moses and the people shook with fear (Heb. 12:18-21). Instead, Christians are lifted up to Mt. Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels and redeemed men, to God the Judge and Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant (Heb. 12:22-24). Christian worship takes place in the heavenly places by faith in Jesus, and through the power of His Spirit. And let us be clear that this is not something that God needs us to assist Him with, either with dim lights, strobe lights, spotlights, smoke machines, or incense, or robes. He doesn’t need us to do this with contemporary or ancient gimmicks or decorations. The central things are those things He has explicitly instructed us to do, those things which the first Christians did joyfully: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). If someone shows up for worship at your church, would they know that these are the central things?

It is this kind of worship that shakes both heaven and earth. The worship of Israel at Mt. Sinai shook the earth and terrified the people, but Christian worship is not less authoritative or potent but more since it originates from heaven itself and shakes both heaven and earth, until nothing remains that can be shaken (Heb. 12:25-27). Worship is one of the central means by which we receive this unshakeable kingdom, and therefore our worship must be reverent because God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:28-29).

If you want to see the gates of Hell fall in your city, if you want to see the idols of men totter and fall in your community, then shouldn’t you be doing those things that the Bible says do that? Don’t misunderstand: We don’t worship or go to church in a mechanistic way. Worship is not like some kind of Ouija board or voodoo doll or vending machine. While the Battle of Jericho is a glorious type of what we’re talking about, we have no command or promise from God to duplicate that same tactic at your local abortion clinic — marching around it and blowing shofars, for example (although the occasional militant psalm sing outside the death camp can certainly be a wonderful thing to do). We are certainly worshiping the same God who does those kinds of things, but worship is not directly political on the earthly plain. It is political only indirectly, since in worship we gather in Heaven to worship the King, and from Heaven, Christ rules and judges the nations. When John witnessed the worship that was taking place in Heaven (on the “Lord’s Day” Rev. 1:10), he saw judgements fall upon the earth. 

But worship services that imitate night clubs, pop concerts, circus events, or LARPing Dungeons and Dragons, Hogwarts, and Lord of the Rings are all their own version of immature, foolish, and ultimately impotent. If you’re pretending to worship, if you’re playing dress up, then you already have your reward.

Acceptable Worship
Hebrews says that we must worship God acceptably, with reverence and awe (Heb. 12:29). This kind of worship is orderly, dignified, formal, and full of joy. You wouldn’t stand up to give a speech for the president or congress and just wing it. When you speak before the King of the Universe, let your words be few and well-chosen. This need not be stuffy or fussy or cranky. It ought to reflect the high joy of a coronation, a wedding, a graduation. It is planned and personal, not casual, not flippant, not random. This is mature worship. This is the kind of worship that God blesses, the kind of worship that God makes fruitful and potent in marriages and families, in businesses and communities, and in nations.

Acceptable worship takes place in the presence God and under His blessing. It is not acceptable worship where people say God-words and sing God-songs or where you can draw complex typological algorithms on a white board, but where God is not actually present with power. And it is not acceptable worship to summons God, invoking His name, and then do and say things that do not please Him. Nor is it acceptable to do things that God has commanded merely as a way to buy Him off for all the ways you are disobeying Him elsewhere (Is. 1:10-15).  

The only way a finite sinner approaches the holy and infinite God is by the gift of evangelical faith. For without faith no one can please God (Heb. 11:6). Evangelical means “gospel,” and what we mean is that the only way into the presence of God is by the blood and righteousness of Jesus covering all the worship and all of the worshipper. Hebrews says that the fire storm of God’s presence is far more glorious and should be more terrifying than at Mt. Sinai (Heb. 12:25). As Annie Dillard once remarked, “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.”

The blood of Christ, the blood of the New Covenant, speaks better things than that of Abel, but we are still like Noah riding in the storm, like Israel walking through the Sea, looking for the fire to fall on the water-drenched altar of Elijah. It is joyful and solemn. And faith is what holds all of this together: faith in the person and work of Jesus. And faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is not resting in medieval buildings, Gandalf-costumes, or slick speakers, or multimedia presentations. It is hearing the Word and believing.

We do not need lights, smoke, or any other props. Since we are embodied creatures, simple adornment is fine, but if faith in the Word is the central thing, then we want to keep the central things central: the Word read and preached, the Word sung and prayed, simple water, simple bread and simple wine, all received with deep thanksgiving and faith. This is what shakes the world. This is the seed that grows into a tree. This is what changes everything. 

Conclusion: Covenant Renewal & Sacrificial Worship
When Israel met with God at Mt. Sinai, they did so in order to renew the covenant that God had made and renewed with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 2:23-24, 3:16, 6:3-8, 24:6-8, 15-18). That covenant with Abraham was a renewal of the covenant that God had made with Noah (Gen. 9:1-17), which in turn was a renewal of the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve after the Fall (Gen. 3:15-24). The covenant needed renewing not because it expired, but Paul says to think of the Old Testament as the time when Israel was in school under tutors (Gal. 4:1-4).

So think of the covenant renewals of the Old Covenant like convocations at the beginning of a new school year after summer vacation. God was teaching, training, and graduating His people in the school of preparation for Christ. The sacrificial system was a “memorial” system meant to constantly remind Israel that they were God’s people, and at the same time it was a standing reminder to God to remember His promises to His people, to save them from their sins and to send the final sacrifice and Messiah. Every sacrifice was a mini-covenant renewal (cf. Ps. 50:5). Just as couples go on dates and continuously pursue one another romantically, renewing the marriage covenant as they do, so too God has always been pleased when His people gather together to renew covenant with, in the simplicity of Word and Sacrament.  

Mature Christian worship shakes everything that can be shaken (Heb. 12:26-27). Mature worship differs from immature worship like a little boy differs from a man in throwing a punch, building a deck, or getting married. At best, immature worship may be cute or sentimental, but it has little spiritual or cultural weight. Why do we have so many millions of professing Christians going to church most Sundays in this land, with such impotent results? Because so much of what passes for Christian worship is impotent, effeminate, childish, and play-acting. 

What Jesus established in the Church was to be the worship of Heaven, and this kind of potent, mature worship shakes heaven and earth, and this isn’t talking about “falling out” in the Spirit. This isn’t talking about some sweet bass drop or emotional high or theatrical pose. This is talking about the sword of God’s word being taught from Genesis to Revelation, every book, every chapter, every verse, applied to every area of life. This shaking means the real change of men and women, with impact on their businesses, families, marriages, schools all the way up to the United Nations, the Supreme Court, the Oval Office, Wall Street, and everything in between. 

The Church is the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and as the Church goes, so goes the world. Another way of getting at this same principle is that you become what you worship (Ps. 115:8). Part of the theological lesson of all the blind, deaf, mute, and crippled people in Israel when Jesus came in the gospels is that Israel had been worshiping idols (and there were demons in many of the synagogues, Mk. 1:39). However, when the whole Christ is preached, we all with open face behold the glory of the Lord and are changed into the same image – whole humans, from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). This is the maturity we aim for. 

The New Testament speaks of this transformational communion with God sacrificially: “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable [worship]. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Rom. 12:1-2). The cross was the final and complete bloody sacrifice, but the New Testament teaches that Christian worship is still sacrificial (Heb. 13:5, 16, 1 Pet. 2:5). The main Old Testament sacrifices were the sin offering, ascension offering, and peace offering, and when they were offered together, they were offered in that order (Lev. 9, cf. Num. 6, Ez. 45:17, 2 Chron. 29). So in our traditional Biblical worship services, we are called to worship in the name of the Triune God, we Confess our sins like the ancient sin offering, we are Consecrated by the sword of the Spirit in the reading and preaching of the Word like the ascension offering (or whole burnt offering), we Commune with God and one another as the Israelites did in the peace offering, and finally, we are Commissioned, sent out with the blessing of God on our heads. And we trust that the fire of God’s presence will fall and burn everything new.

It’s particularly import not to say that we did worship correctly, or we did the liturgy, therefore we have God’s blessing. There is a way of being grown up that is actually very childish, a way of being grown up that is just set in the old ways, thoughtlessly, and presumptuously. What we want to see and enjoy is real fruit. We want to offer Biblically mature worship with a childlike faith in Christ, hungry for the fruit of the Spirit, watching for heaven and earth to shake, “proving what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2). 

Photo by Micah Williams on Unsplash

The Duty of Ordered Love & the Sins of Identity Politics

New Years Day Message: State of the Church 2023

Introduction
As the Christian foundations of our society continue to crumble, animosity is the inevitable result, because in this New World that Christ rules, there is no other integration point, no other peace, no other fellowship. It is literally Christ or nothing. But this doesn’t stop rebellious men in their pride from forging false integration points, politically, culturally, or racially, but since they are all idolatrous rivals to Christ, they will only succeed in deforming men, inciting malice and envy (Ps. 115:8).

Our presbytery recently adopted the following statements in order to address some of the dynamics of our current situation, proposing them to the full CREC to be adopted as memorials:

On Ethnic Balance
We believe the human tendency to congregate around shared affections is natural and can be good—it creates the blessing of cultures and subcultures, for example. But as with all natural goods in a fallen world, there is a temptation to exalt it to a position of unbiblical importance, thus making it an idol. While an ethnic heritage is something to be grateful for, and which may be preserved in any way consistent with the law of God, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, including kinism—whether malicious, vainglorious, or ideologically separatist/segregationist.

On Anti-Semitism
We believe the conversion of the Jews is key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission, and it is incumbent upon us to pray and labor toward that end. While, apart from Christ, the Jews are as all others––alienated from God—they have remained an object of God’s care because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. God’s plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ’s lordship, thus leading them to long for the same. Hence, the cancerous sin of anti-Semitism has no place in God’s plan.

The Text: “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mk. 12:29-31).

Rightly Ordered Loves
What we are currently witnessing is a complete disintegration of Christian love and loyalty, and so right on schedule what is beginning to emerge in various quarters are reactionary false forms of love and loyalty: for some time now, statism, socialism, and multiculturalism (unity through government programs and sentimental/gnostic love, “love is love”) on one side and in reaction to that idolatry, a return to the “old gods,” age old ethnic pride, racialism, segregationism, and prejudice on the other side (unity through blood and genes and soil, which is it’s own kind of sentimental/gnostic love, albeit a bit more tangible). So we really have to think and act like Christians, refusing to budge to the headwinds of statist multiculturalism, while refusing to give an inch to reactionary idols. And this means keeping the Bible central and what the Bible says about love and loyalty central. 

Biblical love is treating others lawfully from the heart. And Augustine’s definition of virtue as “rightly ordered love” is inherent in being created, finite creatures. We cannot love everything and everyone infinitely; we must choose and calibrate our loves. We must love some things/people more and others less. Sin is disordered love: loving evil or else loving something good too much or too little. Our loves are ranked in the greatest commands: we must love God first, above all else, heart, mind, soul, and strength, and then we must love our neighbors as ourselves (Mk. 12:30-31, cf. Lev. 19:17-18, 33-34). Jesus is teaching this same ordering of loves when He insists that loyalty to Him and His people must rank over our own families and will sometimes even appear as a hatred of them or even your own life (Lk. 14:26, Mt. 12:48-50, Lk. 12:53). 

But that ranking cannot be understood as a simplistic abolition of natural loves: Jesus also affirmed the fifth commandment over certain church fundraising programs (Mk. 7:10-12), promised to abundantly restore families and lands to those loyal to Him (Mk. 10:29-30), and honored His own mother greatly (Jn. 19:26-27). Jesus taught a covenantal ordering of loves.

Many modern Christians when faced with a wayward family member compromise their loyalty to Christ and His Word, buying the lie that holding that line means “hating” their family. On the one hand, Jesus clearly taught that following Him would sometimes seem “hateful” (Lk. 14:26). On the other hand, rightly ordered loves insists on loving Jesus more, but that doesn’t mean you cannot also love unbelieving/wayward family members.

Jesus also modeled this in His friendships: He was closer to some disciples than others: the 70 were closer than many, the 12 were closer still, but Peter, James, and John were His closest friends, while John was His best friend. A certain sentimentalism resents this as “not fair” or even “hateful,” but this is the way God made the world. This applies to friends (Prov. 27:6, 17), marriage (Mk. 10:9), and children (Is. 49:15, Mt. 23:37).

Bitter and envious sentimentalism resents this and will eventually defend every form of treachery. We’ve seen this in the modern “Disney” gospels of “follow your heart.” If you disobey your parents, they will apologize to you and and everything will work out in the end – in children’s movies, but frequently adultery and fornication are justified by sentimental resentment everywhere else. Disloyalty to marriage covenants is justified because he/she just wasn’t happy, and they deserve to be happy. But disloyalty in the home can only cultivate disloyalty in a culture/nation. Jesus teaches the ordering/ranking of our loves, which includes our enemies, even unbelieving family. But this is not measured primarily by feelings, but by Biblical duties.

Learning to Love Rightly 
Christ is the only true integration point of all things (Col. 1:20). But this reconciliation is not an obliteration of creational differences, loyalties, or loves. The fact that that there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus does not abolish a husband’s duty to his wife; nor does his godly favoritism mean that he hates all other women.

In fact, the Bible insists that we learn love from the lesser to the greater, from the closer to the further away, from the more concrete to the more abstract. The right kind of love of self teaches us to love our neighbors, beginning with those closest to us (Eph. 5:28), and ultimately teaches us to consider others better than ourselves (Phil. 2:3). David says that he learned to trust in God from his mother’s breast (Ps. 22:10). 

This covenant loyalty charges families to provide for their own before others, and so learn godliness and generosity there first (1 Tim. 5:4, 8), which, when done rightly, prepares justice, mercy, and hospitality for strangers and emergencies (cf. Lk. 10:25, Lev. 19:33-34). But it is not true love to give what you don’t have (2 Cor. 8:12). You should not give an extra tithe to the deacons fund that leaves you unable to pay your own electric bill. Bible says that we do bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), but it also teaches that this begins with every man bearing his own burdens (Gal. 6:5). And this includes the debt of love, beginning in your own homes. 

Where these kinds of ordered covenant loves are despised, all talk of “love” is empty, aimless, selfish, and destructive. Just as you cannot really love God (whom you have not seen) if you do not love your neighbor (whom you have seen), neither can you love your neighbor whom you barely know if you do not love the neighbor who lives with you (1 Jn. 4:20). 

Provoked to Jealousy
The Bible teaches that envy is the satanic lust at the heart of much animosity (Js. 4:1-5), and vain glory and pride often feed and provoke this bitter envy from both ends (Js. 3:14-16, Gal. 5:26). This can happen inside families and inside churches and communities between families. And it happens generally in the world. But the more faithful God’s people are in particular, the more provoked to envy their enemies will be (e.g. Gen. 26:14). We can expect that as God’s blessing continues to be upon us, there will be many who hate us for that reason, and so we should not be surprised. 

However, there is also a godliness that provokes love and good works (Heb. 10:24, 2 Cor. 9:2). And of course, this is what we should be aiming for. We should be seeking to “outdo” one another in love and good works not for bragging rights or to intentionally provoke to fleshly envy but to provoke them to love God and their people better. We should love our people most with the goal of provoking others to love their people the most.

The Bible says that this is what God is doing with the Jews in particular, saving the Gentile nations first “to provoke them to jealousy” and “emulation” (Rom. 11:11, 14) “until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25). As it relates to the gospel, the Jews are no different than any other nation, but as it relates to covenant history, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). Paul says, “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh… As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes” (Rom. 9:3, 11:28). Paul’s example teaches us to hate what God hates (all vain glory, malice, lies, theft, unbelief, etc.) and to order our covenant loves faithfully (God, family, church, neighbors, nation, etc.). God is always first, and family is usually next, but if your family is unbelieving or there is an emergency, priorities must shift. And we owe different love/loyalty to different people depending on the circumstances, and what our duties are before God. 

Conclusion 
The vision in Revelation is of a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, tribe, people, language, standing before the throne worshipping the Lamb (Rev. 7:9-10) and the kings of the nations bringing the glory and honor of the nations into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24-26). This vision is of a glory that is both one and many, with unity and diversity, but it is a unity that the Spirit achieves through a centrifugal love, beginning at the most local, the most intimate, and growing out from there.

No scheme of man can ever conjure this, and so we reject all identity politics: socialism, social engineering, racial vain glory, and all ethnic animosity. The gospel restores families and nations without putting them in a humanistic blender or coercing a false unity through superficial diversity (guilt manipulation, quotas, etc.).

True virtue is a rightly ordered love, beginning with your own people, gathered around shared loves, with worship of the Lamb at the center. So as we begin a new year, consider your own loves and loyalties. Are your loves ordered well? You cannot love everything and everyone the same, and God doesn’t want you to. He wants you to love obediently. Choose your loves, and then love your choices. But choose your loves obediently, faithfully, trusting that it is the love of God for You giving you these gifts.

Photo by loly galina on Unsplash

Rise the Woman’s Conquering Seed

Christmas Eve Homily 2022

Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the great dragon slayer so that the human race might become a race of dragon slayers. In the beginning, God put Adam and Eve into a perfect Garden, in a perfect world, with a perfect marriage, a perfect job, and a perfect relationship with God and one another. And then God allowed a dragon into that world, a talking dragon, a crafty dragon, a lying dragon. And the woman listened to the voice of the dragon, and the man listened to the voice of his wife, and plunged our race into a snakebit darkness, poisoned with selfishness, bitterness, guilt, shame, death, and accusation. 

But we serve the infinite, omnipotent God who is not stymied by anything. He is not puzzled by anything. There is nothing that can stop His plan, and everything that tries to is only taken up into His plan: He works all things together for good. And so in His mercy and justice and power, He promised to take away the sin of man, satisfy His perfect justice, and at the same time deliver man, crush sin, Satan, and death, and restore all things. And He promised to do it all through the seed of the woman, the seed of Eve. And we should have known that this would be beyond anything we might expect even from this first promise, since properly speaking, a woman does not have seed. A woman may conceive seed, but properly speaking, it is the male part of the human race that has seed, but his seed became poisoned, disfigured, and evil. 

And so the women were barren: Sarah was barren, Rebekah was barren, Rachel was barren, and Hannah, and Ruth, down to old Elizabeth. Only God could open wombs. Only God could give conception. All their schemes turned into trouble and misery. But the promise was unmistakable: the seed of the woman would kill the dragon. But a woman does not have seed. And so the prophet finally said what everyone had to be thinking: a virgin will conceive and bear a son. The seed cannot come from a fallen man, a snake-bit man; God will provide the seed. 

So He did, and Mary brought forth her Son, never having known a man, and laid him in a manger. Here at last in Bethlehem, for the first time is the seed of the woman. No other woman has ever brought forth a child without the aid of a man. The Holy Spirit hovered over that empty womb, and said Let there be light: and there was the Light of all Light, the Lightest Light, the Brightest Light. And she called His name Jesus, because He came to kill the dragon and save His people from their sins. 

But the poison of the serpent infects everything. It is death and uncleanness in everything. Everything that a sin-infected person touches is covered in it. Evil thoughts, envy, jealousy, biting words, rage, bitterness, lust, pride, arrogance, hatred, deviance. You can’t wash it off. You can’t make up for it because even your good deeds are still full of it, your best deeds still reek of the serpent smell, the foul odor of selfishness, pride, fear, resentment, shame. The dragon is a tape worm sucking life from every corner. So how can the Seed of the Woman kill this hydra-dragon, this many-headed tape worm? The only way is for every infected human to die. Like all parasites, if the host dies, the parasite dies. But then the problem in our case is that the human has died. 

So the Seed of the Woman was born in order to take the human race with Him down into the pit of the snake, down into the lair of the dragon, down into the heart of the earth, down into death itself. And there, to receive the justice for all our sin, receiving all our darkness, all our filth, every accusation, all the condemnation of the Devil, nailing the handwriting of ordinances that was against us to His cross, until every last one was paid. Until every single tape worm was dead, until the last drop of shame was starved, until perfect justice was paid. 

The power of the dragon is the power of death, and he had the power of death because He accuses guilty sinners of their sin. But the Seed of the Woman has no sin. He can fight the dragon because the dragon has no power over Him. The dragon came and tempted Him, but He did not yield. He has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet He remained without sin, so that He can fully sympathize with us in our weakness, and yet He understands all of it better than us because He has never once yielded for a moment. 

Death only holds those who are guilty. Guilt is a millstone and death is the ocean of God’s justice. And the dragon only needed to shove you off the plank, and sinners sink all by themselves by the weight of all our sin. The Dragon accuses, and guilty sinners cower in fear. The dragon accuses, and guilty sinners plunge beneath the waves of guilt and shame. But the Seed of the Woman is not guilty of any charge, and so when the seed of the woman died, when He was crucified on a Roman cross, the only way He could die was by virtue of identifying with us. He claimed us as His own, and in so doing, He claimed our filth, our sin, our rage, our evil thoughts, our drunkenness, our rebellion. He claimed it all, and sunk into death because of it all. But when it was all paid, when it was completely finished. There was nothing holding Him down. And so He rose: like light bursting out of the darkness, like a seed out of nowhere, like a buoy surging up through the waves, but when He rose, He did not rise empty handed. He rose with us in tow. He rose with us under His Everlasting Arms. He went down, identifying with us, with our serpent-sins, our snake-bit poison, but when He rose, He identified us with Him. He took us down so that we might die, and all our sin died in Him. And then He rose, so that we might live, so that all His Life and Light might live in us. 

Jesus is the Seed of the Woman, and He crushed the head of the dragon. He defanged the Accuser by paying for all the accusations. But the way He did it turns all those who believe into dragon-slayers. So how do the saints overcome the dragon? Through the blood of the Lamb and their testimony (Rev. 12:11). And how does that work? If we walk in the light as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman, the Lamb of God, cleanses us from all sins (1 Jn. 1:7). How does the blood cleanse us? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn. 1:9). 

How do you fight the dragon? By confessing your sins to God and one another and forgiving one another quickly. When you confess your sins, you stomp on the head of the dragon. When you confess your sins, a little more Light breaks out in this world. And this is our testimony: that we have been washed and forgiven by the blood of the Lamb, and now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and now we are not afraid anymore.   

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of the great Dragon-slayer, and in Him, the birth of a race of dragon slayers. So lift up your heads. Lift up your hearts. Christ is born. The Seed of the Woman has come. The dragon has been mortally wounded, and you have been set free. So take up your arms. Confess your sins. Forgive one another. Rejoice and sing and celebrate. This your testimony, and by this testimony you overcome the dragon. 

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