Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 26

Sing Psalms

If you’re new to the community, you will have noticed that we do a lot of singing, and we work on singing regularly. This is because we believe what the Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. We are commanded to sing Psalms in particular throughout Scripture, and singing is associated with being filled with the Holy Spirit. This is why we have scheduled Psalm sings regularly, beer and Psalms frequently on Wednesdays for men, and chances are pretty good that if a few kirker families get together at some other event, singing might break out. 

So the exhortation is simply to keep it up, and if you’re new around here, please join in. We give out copies of the Cantus Christi psalter to new members, but you can pick up more copies at Canon Press as needed. There is also a growing music library on the Christ Church website. I want to also make you aware of an app called “Sing Your Part” which has most of the Cantus on it and you can click on songs and the app will play it back to you. We are also excited to have Gabe Gollehon taking a more full time role at King’s Cross this next year and helping us start a choir that will sing regularly. 

But I also want to encourage you to do one more thing: sing in your homes as families. If you’ve never done this, start with something simple. Sing the Doxology or the Lord’s Prayer. Pull out the Cantus and pick out an old favorite. Or take song sheets home after church and collect the ones you really like. 

This is Pentecost Sunday, the 50th day after Easter, the day we celebrate the pouring out of the Spirit. Scripture says that one of the ways we are filled with the Spirit is through singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We believe that God is in the process of doing something spectacular here in our midst, and we believe that a big part of what He is doing is related to restoring robust Psalm singing in our midst. The Psalms are the war songs of the Church. The Psalms are the steak and potatoes for men and women, boys and girls committed to fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil. Do you want joy in your home? Sing Psalms around your dinner table. Do you want to drive away temptation, bad attitudes, hard hearts, and just plain taunt the Devil? Sing Psalms in your car. Do you want God to grant Reformation to our land and silence the proud and the foolish? Sing Psalms every chance you get.  

Photo by Michael Maasen on Unsplash

Jordan Peterson, Jason Whitlock, and the Objectivity of Beauty

Introduction
So a couple weeks ago Jordan Peterson had the audacity to point out that one of the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit models was not beautiful. Responding on Twitter, Peterson wrote: “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” Key details in what followed are the fact that the woman in question is Yumi Nu, an Asian woman who is overweight. Following the (completely expected) backlash of vitriol and frenzied hysteria, Peterson announced that he was personally leaving Twitter, even if assistants would continue posting public notices on his account from time to time. 

My friend Jason Whitlock over at The Blaze said that Peterson “misspoke,” since beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Instead, Peterson should have said that the Yumi Nu was “not healthy.” Whitlock wrote: “He undermined a fact with a personal opinion, and by doing so, he allowed the woke to once again dodge responsibility for their real evil agenda.” 

I agree that in this current mayhem, what is needed is facts not opinions or feelings, and the woke certainly do have a “real evil agenda.” I also think that Peterson’s response to the backlash was unfortunate (but that’s a conversation for another day). However, on the question of beauty, Peterson was actually right and Whitlock is half-wrong. 

What God Thinks Is Beautiful
I certainly don’t think that any women should be prostituted the way Sports Illustrated has been doing for decades. Beautiful or not, women were made by God to be cherished and protected by fathers, brothers, and a husband, not ogled, lusted over, and thrown away when the thrill is gone. 

But this is partly because beauty is not merely subjective. Beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder. Yes, there is such a thing as taste, preference, and subjective appreciation. There is a vast array of beauty in this world, and it’s absolutely fine to be drawn more to some than others. But beauty is still objective. Some things and people are beautiful, and some things and people are not. And some are more beautiful than others. “Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored” (Gen. 29:17). This is the Bible saying, somewhat diplomatically, that Rachel was more beautiful than her sister Leah. This is not merely the subjective opinion or preference of Moses or Jacob or any mere man. This is the objective evaluation of God. 

Likewise, Scripture says that David was beautiful/handsome of appearance (1 Sam. 16:12), as was Abigail the wife of that infamous fathead Nabal (1 Sam. 25:3). Likewise, Bathsheba was beautiful (2 Sam. 11:2), and so was Absalom (2 Sam. 14:25) and Esther (Esth. 2:7). In all of the land, there were no women so fair and lovely as the daughters of Job (Job 42:15). God also says that the garments of the priests were given for glory and beauty (Ex. 28:2), as was the Temple (2 Chron. 3:6). Furthermore, God repeatedly commands His people to worship Him in the “beauty” of holiness (2 Chron. 20:21, Ps. 29:2, 96:9). These are not subjective descriptions. God finds certain things and certain people more beautiful than others. When God commands His people to make the tabernacle and the priestly garments and worship Him in the beauty of holiness, He is not saying, ‘Do whatever you like.’ He is assuming that there are certain patterns, features, order, harmony, symmetry that are more objectively beautiful than others. 

Perhaps the clincher is the fact that God Himself is described as beautiful: “One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD…” (Ps. 27:4). “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us” (Ps. 90:17). If God is God, and there is no other, then He is the standard of beauty. His order, His glory, His holiness, His perfection is beauty itself. The Christian hope is not merely to “go to Heaven,” the Christian hope is what the medievals called the “beatific vision” – to see God: “we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:2). 

If God says that something is not beautiful, it isn’t beautiful, even if you really like it. And if God says that something is beautiful, and you don’t particularly appreciate it, who’s right? 

Now I certainly grant that beauty seems to be a far more difficult and elusive matter than ethics and morals and truth. But this is partly our collective fault for not exercising these muscles; we have become an intellectually and aesthetically flabby people. Our churches and worship songs and neighborhoods are not beautiful. They are utilitarian, cheap, and easy, just like those Sports Illustrated models. As a Christian people we have abandoned a rich heritage of thought on the objective standards of beauty. Our forefathers spent multiple lifetimes and vast sums of wealth and resources building the cathedrals because they believed in the objectivity of beauty. This isn’t to say that the medievals got everything right. But like the western tradition of justice, we should look back with deep appreciation for the progress they made. Conservative Christians have rightly fought back against the relativism of postmodernism and its current manifestation in woke politics. We have rightly insisted that truth and goodness are objective realities regardless of our feelings or the color of our skin or what day of the week it is. 

The Philosophical Trinity
But a remaining weak flank in conservatism is the transcendental of beauty. The ancients understood that all three transcendentals hold together, and if you abandoned one, you were already in the process of abandoning them all. Like the Trinity, this philosophical trinity is inseparable. Truth is good and beautiful. And goodness is true and beautiful. And beauty is always true and good. Think about it: if you let beauty slide, you are saying that truth and goodness might actually be ugly. You’re saying that immorality and injustice might be beautiful (at least in the eye of the beholder). But if God is God, that is blasphemy.

When the last trumpet sounds and we are raised in new bodies to stand before the Throne and we see the Pit of Everlasting Fire and the Devil and all His angels cast in forever, there will be no comparison: all the glory, all the beauty will be on the throne with the Lamb and in the New Jerusalem where the nations bring their glory, where every tear will be wiped away, and all that is ugly, hideous, twisted, and sad will be in the Lake of Fire. If that is the ultimate end of all things, then we are practicing for one of those two destinations now. The Last Day will not be aesthetically random or capricious or merely subjective. 

Part of what we need to insist on here is that there is something in human beings that answers to beauty. Conservatives know that objective truth and goodness must be honored in order for sanity and rationality and order to exist in the world because of the nature of God, but it’s the same with beauty. If God is beauty itself, then we were made to love and enjoy and rejoice in His beauty both now and in this world and in the age to come. Augustine famously said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. But we do not merely find in Him all goodness and truth, we also find in Him our heart’s desires for beauty, for glory.

What is this created world but a reflection of and in invitation to know the Source of all beauty? And in the same way that conservatives refuse to capitulate to woke equalitarianism, refusing to be guilt-mobbed into flattening out every difference in the name of “equality,” with quotas of women or Eskimos or redheads, we must not be guilt-hustled into similar places because “some people think that’s beautiful.” Some people think that two dudes shacking up is beautiful. But it is not. Some people think that two dudes buying eggs and mixing up babies in a test tube is the start of a beautiful family. It is not. 

And to Whitlock’s point, our abandonment of objective beauty is part of what is allowing the woke to continue pressing their evil agenda on our culture. They know that we have surrendered that point, and so they flaunt their ugly morality all day long. The dudes in dresses are not just evil, not just liars, they are also objectively ugly. The disfiguring of what God has made is ugly. Extreme versions of this are seen in the transgender mutilations, but the destruction of human bodies through gluttonous obesity, face piercing, and grotesque tattoos all flow from the same rejection of objective beauty. Whitlock is correct that obesity is not healthy, just like sodomy is not healthy, like puberty blockers are not healthy, but that is precisely one of the reasons we should agree with Peterson that it is not beautiful. It is never beautiful to disfigure the image of God. 

Conclusion
Yoram Hazony has pointed out that in the 1960s, conservatives made a bargain with liberals that we would defend a liberal public square if we could continue being Christian in our private lives. But this was a Devil’s bargain because the public square always bleeds into private life: relativism in the public square is never truly neutral, and that so-called “fusionism” is what has given birth to Drag Queen Story Hours and the proliferation of public obscenity and pornography. And all of it really is grooming our children for destruction. We should have never taken the bargain, and we really must work to restore an explicitly and unapologetically Christian public square, one that acknowledges that Jesus is Lord of everything. But that means that Jesus is not only Lord of all truth and goodness; He is also Lord of all beauty. 

Conservatives should be known for our creativity, for our imaginations, for our contributions to the arts. We are the ones who believe in transcendent standards. We believe the world has a particular shape, order, harmony, and meaning because it was Created by a good and loving God. But as long as we agree with the woke mob that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, we will be giving up one of the central gifts of God, one of the mightiest weapons in our arsenal. It is not merely truth and goodness that persuade; it is beauty that touches peoples’ hearts. Why should those who hate God tell better stories, paint more lovely pictures, or make more glorious music? If we want to win, conservatives must recover the objectivity of beauty. 

All the Way In

What difference does it make that Jesus ascended into heaven? Wouldn’t it have been better if He had just stayed here? 

The Ascension of Jesus makes all the difference. It means that a man just like us has gone into the presence of God. Jesus made it in. Jesus made it home. Sin, death, and the devil have stood in this world like gargoyles scowling and growling at the descendants of Adam since the Fall. The flaming sword of God’s wrath stood at the entrance. No one could pass. No one could go in. So Jesus came. And He who knew no sin became sin for us. God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Jesus rose up victorious on the third day having paid for sin, satisfying God’s wrath, defeated death, and therefore completely disarmed the Devil.

The resurrection certainly proclaimed and accomplished that victory, but it wasn’t until the Ascension that Jesus proved that victory. He went all the way into the presence of the Ancient of Days, and He didn’t die. He went all the way in, all the way home, and He was welcomed there. He was given the highest seat in the house at God’s right hand. 

But the gospel proclaims that all who are in Christ went all the way in with Him, all the way home with Him and in Him. Every Sunday at the beginning of the service, the minister says: Lift up your hearts, and you respond: We lift them up to the Lord. And this has been the way the Church has confessed this gospel of the Ascension since the earliest days of the church. We are saying that when we gather together for worship, we are not simply gathering together here on earth. No, the Bible says that we have come to the heavenly Mt. Zion. 

So no, it wouldn’t have been better for Jesus just to stay here. It was better for Him to go because it proved and accomplished the arch of the whole gospel. The good news is not just that our sins are paid for; the good news is that we have been brought home. We have been carried all the way into the presence of God. And we have been welcomed there.

In the Old Covenant, the High Priest had the names of Israel engraved on precious jewels on his breastplate. Jesus is our Great High Priest, and He has carried our names all the way into Heaven. Do you believe? Then come. Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash

Put to Death Therefore

Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus. The Bible says that after the resurrection Jesus was seen by many witnesses for 40 days and then He ascended into Heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. Today is the Sunday after the 40th day from Easter. 

Colossians 3 gives one of the practical implications of the ascension of Jesus: putting to death your sin. “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God… Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Put to death therefore, what is earthly in you… And this is actually the only way you can put to death sexual immorality, impurity, evil desires, or covetousness. You can only put them to death by the Ascension of Christ and by being raised with Christ. You can only seek the things that are above if you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God in Heaven. 

If you haven’t died and your life is not yet hidden with Christ in God, you cannot seek the things that are above, and you cannot set your mind on things above. And you really must not mistake talking about theology, conservative politics, reading the Bible, going to church, or even saying prayers with actually seeking things that are above. Do remember who the people were who rejected Jesus? They were mostly religious people.

We live in a land full of religious people who don’t know Jesus, who have not died, whose lives are not hid with Christ in God, and therefore, they cannot set their minds on things above and therefore they cannot put to death the sins in their flesh. 

Those who go through religious motions are hypocrites because they know that they cannot actually stop sinning. They talk about sin and grace, but they don’t actually know what those words mean. But those who have met Jesus, who have truly been born again know that Jesus has ascended into Heaven, and they know this because they have miraculously been able to put their sin to death.

Photo by Vincent Bombardier on Unsplash

Not About White or Women or Politics

Introduction
Admittedly, this like three blog posts in one. That either means this is a barn-burning bargain, or else I should rename this place Having Three Legs, since it’s getting little unruly in here.  

So in the first instance, the play the radical Left has apparently determined to run and keep running unto ages of ages is that of calling everybody they disagree with “white nationalists.” So follow this closely: apparently, since I believe that more black babies should live in these United States, I’m a… “white nationalist.” Also, since I believe that more black mothers should be spared the scars and guilt and shame of murdering their own children, I’m a… you guessed it: white evangelical who has been radicalized by an ever-increasing politicization of my church. Huh. Who knew?

The logic apparently is that since white people have been in the majority in America, that hegemony, that power dynamic has systemically oppressed other races and minorities whether consciously or unconsciously, and now we are trying to force black women to give birth and deny them opportunities for career advancement, since that is apparently the absolute pinnacle of all human existence: advancement in cubicles (maybe you’ll get one with a window). Clearly, this is the work of white evangelical nationalism. 

Except, not really. Actually, not at all. 

The thing I’m wondering is why no one has looked into the systemic oppression of right-handed people against left-handed people since there are clearly more of them, and their tyrannical reign over various tools and products. Talk about hegemony. Also brunettes far outnumber the redheaded and the blonde, and while we’re at it, what about two-legged people, just walking around like it’s nothing? And all the pants in the world made with two legs, not even giving a fig about all the one-legged humans. Talk about power dynamics. Talk about oppression. White nationalists are probably behind all of it. And why aren’t we also looking into the black nationalism that is no doubt pervasive all over the continent of Africa, where millions of white Europeans were bought and sold in slavery over the centuries? 

Oh. Are we not looking into that?

Darwin Looms Behind It All
Ok, first off, let us reject the racism inherent in all of this. But I really will need to throw elbows in every direction here. White people are not part of a secret club, a cabal, a conspiracy, any more than right-handed people and two-legged people, bless their hearts. Neither are “black people,” er, I mean BIPOC people. Let me say this carefully: people are varied, diverse, different, and unique, even people with similar physical characteristics. Insert liberal white woman mind-blown emoji here. 

The radical left actually acknowledges this, sort of, in their own perverse and hypocritical way when they call Larry Elder the “new black face of white supremacy” or refer to the five justices purported to be overturning Roe, the oligarchs of white evangelicalism. First off, several of them are not evangelicals, bub, and second, if Clarence Thomas is white, I must be translucent.

But it is by this same token that the Right and conservatives need to be extra careful not to be backed into this same corner by accepting any accusations of so-called “Replacement Theory.” This is apparently that view popularized by that cheery French existentialist Albert Camus, accusing non-Europeans of trying to “replace” Europeans and so destroy the European way of life and apparently he thought maybe the Jews had something to do with this. Whether any thoughtful conservative should receive anything from Camus shouldn’t even be a question (certainly not). But when the Leftists are screaming in your face all day long that black and white are the only meaningful categories, and race is everything, you bigots! Some conservatives are going to lose their nerve and finally embrace the categories and fall headfirst into the trap. But the key is to not take the bait. They may be racists, and they may think that destiny is in our genes, but we read Genesis 1, and we know better. There is only one race: the human race. Everybody’s descended from Adam and Noah, from one blood, God made all the nations of the earth. 

The other aspect of racism in all of this is the assumed determinism inherent in the claims in both directions. White people cannot help but oppress, and black people cannot help but be oppressed, except of course when they can help it, but let’s not talk about that. I’m a black coffee Calvinist to my back teeth, but does no one believe in free will anymore at all? I believe that we are all morally enslaved to our natures, but this is universal and not at all race-based or physically determined. It is simply a moral and covenantal fact that the whole human race is descended from the original rebel Adam. Therefore, I believe in the moral agency, the moral dignity of all human beings, beginning with the dignity of universal human guilt. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God: red and yellow, black and white, all are guilty in His sight. And it is dehumanizing to relegate superficial classes of people to categories of permanently perpetuating evil or to eternally helpless victim status, helpless until some white liberal comes to their rescue.

A Longish Side Note
You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe that you actually care about helpless black people when this whole conversation is about you demanding the “right” to dismember millions of the most helpless black people in their mothers’ wombs and selling their body parts for cash. I’ve taken to saying regularly that whenever the world says that they are interested in “empowering” anyone (especially women) you should understand that to be saying that they are aiming to strip women of their God-given glory and power and con them into thinking that the tattered shreds they’re left with are fun, cool, and sexy. 

The arrangement goes like this: give away your virginity cheaply and regularly to men who have no permanent obligations or commitments to you; don’t worry about getting pregnant because we can kill the baby or as many babies as you may happen to get pregnant with; and all of this is so that you can be forced to work long hours in that cubicle (which may or may not have a widow) for some corporate boss who doesn’t give a damn about you so that you can support yourself until you die. This is called women’s liberation, empowering women, and the right to choose. It’s really sexy. Now everybody chant the litany: “Bans off our Body.” Apparently, what they mean by this is the right to choose your mistreatment, enslavement, and a life of misery.  

And quite apart from the incessant lies here, Christians do believe in the right to choose: the right to choose whether to marry or not. Period. Full stop. Christians do not believe in arranged marriages. We believe that a woman is free to accept a man’s offer of marriage or reject it, no questions asked. This is why the woman takes vows right alongside the man in our traditional wedding ceremonies. But these Leftists keep talking like pregnancy happens to women like the flu or inclement weather. They keep talking like a woman cannot function in this world apart from getting pregnant; like you might be sitting there minding your own business and suddenly kaboom you’re pregnant. Man, how’d that happen? But that only happened one time in the history of the world, and that young woman got a warning visit from an angel. Because that’s not how it happens. There is only one virgin birth, and that was Mary the mother of our Lord. It’s striking how relevant the ancient creeds are becoming every day. 

So unless the Leftists really are trying to claim virgin births, what they are actually demanding is the “right” to sexual promiscuity, the so-called “freedom” to have sex with anyone they want, whenever they want, without any consequences. But of course this is impossible, and so they demand abortion to pretend they can. This is like demanding the right to have a brand new car without any dents, and insisting that the universe owes you a new car every time you crash your own. I would humbly suggest that the universe does not owe you a new car, and you should stop driving so recklessly. I don’t really like that analogy since a new human being coming into existence is not really anything like a crashed car. But the point is that certain actions have certain consequences, and it is delusional to demand that your actions not have those consequences. Ok, another analogy: it’s like demanding that you have the right to make a cake and put it in the oven, but whenever you open the oven, it must be completely empty. Why? Well, according to the early feminists, because men can’t bake cakes because they don’t even have ovens, even if you did an operation on them and tried give them one. And just in case you got lost in that analogy, the argument seems to be that women must have the same right to degrade themselves as men. I’m sorry, I meant birthing people, er, I mean. I don’t know. All of this is why you really must watch the new documentary from New St. Andrews College and Canon Press: Eve in Exile with Rebekah Merkle. Talk about a deep breath of fresh air and sanity. 

The Church Becoming Christian
Of course all of this has come upon us, we are told, because of the politicization of “white evangelicals.” And it’s always “white evangelicals,” since we are told every five minutes that 81% of that demographic voted for Trump in 2016. I’m also reliably told that 99% of those who voted for Biden had two legs and two eyes, which is more than a little suspicious if you ask me. But the narrative works like this: evangelicals used to be nice and spiritual, doing the work of the Lord, which apparently has nothing to do with anything earthly, unless of course you are pro-abortion, pro-amnesty for all crimes, free chocolate milk for everybody, and whatever else is on the Democratic platform. If you’re advancing those causes, that’s just common sense compassion, people, but if you want to save the lives of babies (particularly black ones), protect the actual glory and flourishing of women, and think government programs are hooks and chains of slavery, that means you’ve been radicalized by the alt-right and white nationalists. 

But you should just keep repeating this: the so-called “white nationalists” are the ones who think there should be millions more black people in this country since we should stop killing them before they are born. The whole politicization narrative is cute but naïve and wrong. If evangelicals were less politically engaged in past decades it was likely because they were being less faithful to Jesus, not more. Of course I grant that there is such a thing as turning a church service into a political rally. And Jesus would say something like, “Don’t do that. That’s bad” (in Aramaic, of course). 

But Jesus said that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. All authority. In heaven. And on earth. Those pillow-headed Christians and Radical Leftists trying to get us to give up the playing field must think we can’t read. Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. It all belongs to Him. Don’t misunderstand. We are not advocating a Muslim jihad. That would be the Muslims who are advocating for that. We are Christians, and we believe that Jesus has given particular responsibilities to the governments He established on this earth. Those governments are the Church, the State, and the Family. In the same place where Jesus claimed all authority, including all political authority, He commanded the Church to disciple the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything He had commanded. 

So that is what we are doing when we command the civil magistrates to stop killing babies. This is what we are doing when we insist that biological women must be honored and protected as women, and that biological males who are dressing up like women must not be honored as anything remotely similar. This is what we are doing when we teach that men must honor women and protect them and that marriage is the only lawful way for a man to take a woman to bed, and that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, until death. None of this is the Church becoming political, so much as it is the Church becoming Christian. We were commanded by Jesus Christ to teach everything the Bible says, and we were commanded to teach it all to every nation, including America. And along with those things, we are also authorized to command the civil magistrates to stop stealing through confiscatory taxation, particularly property taxes that threaten to steal our property if we don’t pay them, and we may as well also point out that you have absolutely no authorization from Jesus or the constitution to be funding the arts, public television, environmental initiatives, or regulating medicine or medical treatments. Get back into your own lane, which is simply punishing criminals and defending us from the same. And we insist that you do so in Jesus’ name because He is Lord of Heaven and Earth. 

Conclusion
The Lordship of Jesus Christ is why we’re even having this conversation at all. The reason we are being smeared as white nationalists and misogynists is because these same people hate Jesus and they hate the Triune God. But since they cannot do anything whatever to touch Christ or God (how can the finite even approach the Infinite?), all they can do is attack those who bear His image. So it’s not about white, or nationalism, or empowering women, and it’s not really about politics or replacement theories. It’s about rejecting the living God and His Christ. But there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it. They can howl and shriek and smear us all they want, but Jesus is risen from the dead. He is seated at God’s right hand, and He is reigning until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet. But the really glorious thing is that when Jesus conquers, He makes many of His enemies into His friends. And this includes all the current insanity clerks, all the current mad professors, all the current media liars and political thugs. Jesus died for every kind of sin and every kind of sinner, and if you want to be forgiven, you can. 

All of us over here in the Christian Church were once enemies and rebels. All of us. But Jesus conquered us. And the thing that is hard for you to understand is that He conquered us by His grace. He offered us complete forgiveness of all our sins for free. He has said that He has paid the debts of countless millions, and that anyone who wants in, has been paid for. So this is the offer: Lesbians who have had six abortions can be forgiven. Sodomites who have seduced young men can be forgiven. Abortion doctors, sluts and whores, porn addicts, and run of the mill thieves and liars and bigots can all be forgiven. Children who have who cursed their parents can be forgiven. Fathers and mothers who have betrayed their own children can be forgiven. Black racists and white racists can be forgiven. Every stripe of racial or ethnic animosity or vainglory can be forgiven. The blood of Jesus cleanses every kind of stain.

And this is why the Leftists hate Christ the most. They hate Him because He has destroyed the enmity: enmity between God and man, between man and woman, between slave and free, between Jew and gentile. It was all crucified on the cross, and Jesus is reconciling all things. Deep down, the Leftists know that if sinners are cleansed, the gig is up, and their power is gone. If Jesus sets sinners free, there won’t be desperate sinners coming bowing and scraping at the altar of the Almighty State, seeking salvation, giving their offerings of blood and money. So the only “Replacement Theory” we have anything to do with is the promise that Jesus will replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and the nations will all bring their glory into the new Jerusalem. But those nations will be nations conquered by the grace of Christ, a grace that restores nature, a grace that glorifies nature. That grace doesn’t obliterate differences, but it absolutely harmonizes all of them.

God’s Remodeling Project

The Bible is clear that God disciplines the children that He loves so that we will become holy like Him. God sends hardships, challenges, difficulties, and suffering because He is our perfect and loving Father who knows our frames, and He knows exactly what we need. Since we belong to Jesus, we must receive all our trials and challenges with thanksgiving, trusting Him as the perfect coach, the perfect artist, the perfect contractor. He knows what needs to change in us. He knows what needs to go. And most importantly, He knows what we must become. 

The Bible is clear that the glory that God has planned for His people is far beyond what we can even imagine. C.S. Lewis says somewhere that many people become Christians and think that growing in holiness means that God is going to make a few minor cosmetic changes to our life, maybe like painting our little cottage a different color or putting some different flooring down. But when God starts working, it’s nothing like we expected and it’s far more radical and painful. He starts knocking down walls and takes the whole roof off. But that’s because God isn’t just giving our squatty little bungalow a minor upgrade. No, God is determined to remodel us into enormous royal mansions that He can dwell in.

So this is the point: those challenges with your husband, with your wife, with your children, with your parents, with your siblings, with your roommates, with your coworkers, with your health, with your finances, with your job – all of those hardships and trials are God’s good work in you. He intends to take away all our sin, and that means that a bunch of you has to go, a bunch of your personality, a bunch of your preferences, a bunch of your assumptions need to get knocked down and taken to the dump. Jesus says that the only way to find your life is to lose it. The only way to find who you really are is to let Jesus change you. And this means receiving the challenges He sends with thanksgiving as His good work in You.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Josh Olalde on Unsplash

Easy to Please

One of the reasons we have a confession of sin at the beginning of the service every week is to underline the fact that God is easy to please even though He is hard to satisfy. There really is a welcome sign out front of every true Christian worship service. And in the Call to Worship, everyone is truly invited to come. All who want to come into the presence of God, are most welcome in the presence of God.

But God really is holy, holy, holy, and sin cannot come into His presence. I don’t mean this like you’re trying to bring a casserole into God’s house that He doesn’t prefer. Our sin is not merely something that He doesn’t like. No, our sin is literally something that cannot exist in His presence. It will not go in. 

Imagine the way magnets can attract on one side but completely repel on the other. The holiness of God and sin are the two largest magnets in the universe, utterly repelling one another. And no manner of pushing can make them come together. When sin is clinging to you, or better, when you are clinging to your sin, you cannot come in to God’s presence.

But the way in is glorious: simply let it go. Put it down. Confess it. That’s what the confession of sin is. It means letting go of your sin. Let go of your bad attitude. Let go of your complaining spirit, your critical spirit. Let go of your resentment, your bitterness against your wife, your husband, your mom, your dad. Put it down now. Let your lust and envy go now. Let’s go into the presence of God. And you can’t come into God’s presence while holding on to any of it. 

God isn’t keeping you out. Only sin keeps us out. But the promise is glorious: if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God really is easy to please. 

But maybe you say that you really do want to let go of your sin, but you just don’t know how, or maybe you’ve tried, but it just keeps sticking to you. Then you can still come, but you have to confess that. Confess that you want to let go of your sin, but you don’t want to enough, you haven’t truly been able to. God will forgive that sin too, and He will set you completely free. 

Photo by Natasha Ivanchikhina on Unsplash

Immortal Combat: A Word for Pastors

Introduction
It doesn’t seem like I’ve been a pastor as long as I have. Fifteen years means my pastoral ministry is still a teenager. But I think I’ve been through enough at this point to have a few reasonable thoughts about the endeavor. 

I’ve been teaching Homiletics for 7-8 years for Greyfriars Hall, the ministerial training program of Christ Church, where I received my foundational pastoral training. Although I should hasten to add that the foundation for that foundational training was growing up in a pastor’s home where I saw firsthand what faithful pastoral ministry looks like from the inside. More on that below.

Every year I give the same lecture for the first class, and it’s titled something like: Why you probably shouldn’t be a pastor. I tell the men that I consider it my job to try to get them to quit for the right reasons, or failing that to stay in the program for the right reasons. In Lectures to My Students, Charles Spurgeon quotes an old divine answering the question of one who sought his counsel: “Do not enter the ministry if you can help it.” Spurgeon continues, “If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way… If on the other hand, you can say that for all the wealth of both the Indies you could not and dare not espouse any other calling so as to be put aside from the preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, then, depend upon it, if other things be equally satisfactory, you have the signs of this apostleship.” I took this to heart when I first read it probably 20 years ago, and I figured that settled it. I was a happy teacher at the time and could imagine a number of things that I could do. But the Lord slowly closed those other doors, and there I was staring ministry in the face. 

Brothers, We Are Not Pansies
I don’t recall everything Spurgeon said about it, but the thing that comes to my mind is simply that pastoral ministry is hard work. Nobody enlists in the military thinking it will be easy, but far too many men head off to seminary for all the wrong reasons. And unfortunately many seminaries are factories of emasculation. While the military is quickly being emasculated as well, it has been one of the longest hold outs because frankly in war, things get real. But we have so softened pastoral ministry, turning it into a relational, coffee date with some administrative duties that no wonder everyone wonders why a woman can’t do that. In point of fact, given the kind of ministry expected by most churches and seminaries, women would be far better at it than men. But pastoral ministry is immortal combat. We are warring for souls; we are waging war against the powers of Hell. Our job as preachers is to taunt sin, death, and Hell, in the name of Jesus and do daily rescue missions down into the heart of demonic strongholds, bringing out the captives through the blood of Christ. The plan is to get shot at, and if you’re not getting shot at, you probably went the wrong way. 

A seminary education should be a lot more like boot camp than it typically is because in pastoral ministry things also get real. If I had my druthers, I don’t think a man should graduate seminary or be ordained without at least 30 hours of open air preaching and another 30 doing one-on-one evangelism and apologetics. I’m not sure we should ordain a man who hasn’t been cussed out, flipped off, or had his life threatened. I would also recommend that his presbytery enquire into whether he has any enemies at all, what are their names, and diligently confirm that they are enemies for the sake of the gospel (not because he’s a jerk), and that the man in question has been diligently loving them in the truth. 

Far too many Christians are disobedient to the command of Christ to love their enemies, and they are disobedient because they have curated their lives into pristine non-combatant grooves that ensure no conflict, no collision, and therefore no enemies. But Jesus says, “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Lk. 6:26). And how can a captain lead his troops into battle if he has resolutely refused to step foot into the fray? How can you love your enemies if you don’t have any? How can you love your enemies if you have not allowed the gospel to collide with anyone anywhere at any time in order to make any enemies to actually love?

Real Ministerial Combat
You will have a far happier life doing something other than preaching if you are not called. On the other hand, if you have been called, I seriously doubt that you can be happy doing anything else. But it should be firmly fixed in our minds what we are aiming at: “We are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things…” (1 Cor. 4:13) Can you handle that? Are you expecting that? You will be hated. You will be despised. You will be misunderstood. You will be treated like crap. Your name will be a curse in the mouths of the enemies of God. Can your wife handle that? Can you bear family and friends turning against you? Do not become a preacher if you cannot bear the thought of losing everything. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Mt. 10:16). The only good preachers do not count their own lives dear to themselves (Acts 20:24).

The North American church is in such shambles because we are led by so many shepherds who are in the ministry for all the wrong reasons. Maybe they’d make decent Christian school teachers, but they are not cut out for the ministry. They did not sign up for the ministry to lose their lives. They signed up for conferences, reading books, and maybe feeling helpful and encouraging to people in their Christian walks. But you could have done all of that as an academic or maybe even as plumber if you scheduled it right. 

But it’s not just endurance, we’re talking about, it’s a deep profound joy in the struggle and turmoil of ministry: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Mt. 5:11-12). When the bullets start flying, do you freak out, do you break down, or do you grin? When your name is smeared in the paper, do you think, now we’re finally engaging the enemy, or do you think something has gone terribly wrong? Jesus says you are blessed when they revile you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for His sake. Rejoice and be even happier than usual. Are you up for that? Are you practicing that right now?

“And when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus” (Acts 5:40-42). We could barely get churches to open in 2020. And apart from a few courageous Canadian pastors, most were cowards. But the apostles endured an unjust rebuke and beating, and they immediately left the courtroom rejoicing. They didn’t leave thinking that maybe this whole gospel thing was wrong. They didn’t leave talking about different strategies for reaching Jerusalem that might be more winsome. They left rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And then the real kicker is that Luke says that every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ. They did not cease. They did not stop. They redoubled their efforts in the temple where there were arrested and house to house. They found the hot spot in the battle, and they threw themselves into it joyfully.  

There has always been a temptation to ministry that was based on job security, earthly fame, selfish ambition, climate-controlled indoor offices, respectability, and the like. There were four hundred prophets in Ahab’s court– where there was plenty of food, respectability, a conference circuit, and I’m sure plenty of well-meaning Hebrew word studies and outreach programs and sophisticated social commentary. And there were four hundred prophets in Ahab’s court who lied their heads off, telling him to go up to battle and he would no doubt prevail. There was only one that dared to tell him the truth (1 Kgs. 22, 2 Chron. 18). And he was thrown into prison for it. John the Baptist was beheaded. Paul fought with lions. This should be the plan for every minister. The plan is to lose our life for Christ. The plan is to spend it and our reputations and earthly comforts dearly. Jesus built His church at the gates of Hell, so that it would be hard to miss the target. 

A Word About Pastoral Burnout
So this is the plan. The plan is to charge the gates of Hell, to spend our lives for Christ, but there’s not a month that goes by that I don’t see posts and articles and comments from pastors about how hard their job is, articles about pastoral burnout, and the like. And let me say clearly: just like faithful soldiers in the field, pastors do need Sabbath, seasons of recovery, and sometimes God clearly indicates that your tour of service is over. So none of what follows contradicts that. But far too often “pastoral burnout” is code for pastoral cowardice and laziness. Far too often “pastoral burnout” is a siren song to get men to doubt, fear, and turn back from the fray. Of course, if you aren’t called, if you got into ministry because you thought it was like youth ministry with more perks, then by all means, please resign now and get a job at an amusement park. 

But God made men strong. The glory of men is their strength. This is why Paul even urged the entire Corinthian church to “be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). All men are called to be strong for their families, in their work, and in the faith. God created men to be strong so that they would be able to endure more, and this is why the Bible calls the woman the “weaker vessel” (1 Pet. 3:7). This is why men must go first into danger, and they must go last when danger is being fled. This is why men go down with the ship if there are not enough lifeboats. This is why men stand between their women and children and every danger.

This is why Adam was created first, so that he might be cut open for the first woman to be created. This is why Jesus was a man, who came and died for His bride the church. The glory of men is their strength, and this strength is for sacrificial leadership. This strength is for suffering, enduring, fighting, defending, protecting, creating, inventing, and overcoming in obedience to Christ. We were made to stand firm in the truth, in what is right, and to stand there smiling until God delivers us from that situation or until He raises us from the dead at the end. 

This is why God made Ezekiel’s forehead harder than adamant and flint (Ez. 3:8-9). He was sent to a hard-hearted and hard-headed people, and God made his head harder than theirs. This is what it takes to be a pastor. A pastor must have a soft heart for his flock but a hard about sin, death, and the Devil. A pastor must be a man of war. A pastor must be a man because the plan is to die. A pastor must be a man because the plan is to stand firm, to be shot, to be cut, to be beaten, and to die, and do it all with a smile on his face, do it all with deep joy in his heart. All of God’s people must imitate that strength and joy, but the minister is called to lead in it, be an example of it, to show them how.   

Conclusion
I think this is honestly one of the greatest gifts my Dad gave me as a pastor. Growing up in my Dad’s house, the thing that I look back on with such gratitude is how stable, how calm, and how joyful a place it was to be. I was certainly a handful in my days there, and no doubt there were many challenging pastoral situations, many bumps and bruises, many controversies and disagreements and difficulties, but my Dad took them all in stride. I’m sure there were times where he didn’t feel like he was taking them in stride, but I can testify that he did. By God’s grace, he didn’t flake, he didn’t freak out, he didn’t melt down, he didn’t burnout. He has been faithful, day after day, to my mom, to my siblings, to His Master, to the ministry, and he still exudes deep and profound joy. 

This is what it takes, by the grace of God, and it really is all grace. But this is not a soft and flimsy grace. This is a sturdy grace, a fierce grace, a bleeding grace. And when you are called to the ministry, it is the kind of thing that makes you a better man, a better husband, a better father. And if it isn’t that, to Hell with it. Better to be a bus driver or a janitor to the glory of God and be the man your wife needs, the man your children need, because that is the man Jesus wants you to be, the kind of man who will actually be far more potent in the Kingdom. The number of pastor-kids and missionary-kids sacrificed on the altar of so-called ministry is one of the single greatest shames that can be brought upon the name of Christ and one of the greatest testimonies against the truth of Christ. If you can’t raise your own children in the Lord, if your wife is not well-loved and thriving, why would anyone trust you with the flock of God? 

We live in particularly gnarly times, which ought to tell you that God is drawing up the battle lines more clearly, and the reason for that is so that we can continue to fight the good fight of faith and His Kingdom will advance. The plan is for the gospel to collide with unbelief. The plan is for God’s grace to infiltrate the darkest strongholds. And when they shriek and scream and write slanderous accusations against us or fine us or imprison us or beat us or kill us, it must be firmly fixed in our hearts and minds: this is all going according to plan. This is the plan. This is how the Kingdom advances. We stand firm. We announce the Word of God. We are attacked. We rejoice. And we keep it up until the whole world is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, until the Great Commission is accomplished, and all the nations have been discipled and are bringing their glories into the Kingdom. So come on, men, we have work to do. 

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Rejoice When You Are Hated

Jesus said, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great isyour reward in heaven” (Mt. 5:11-12). Elsewhere, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (Jn. 15:19). 

Jesus said that we should expect to be hated by the world, and He said when the world shows that hate, through reviling, smearing, slandering, and lying their heads off, our response must be first and foremost rejoicing. There may be other responses to take as well. There are times for responding to the false accusations and bigotry, sometimes through private conversation, sometimes through public statement, and sometimes through legal litigation, but the foundational tone prior to any response must be joy. Jesus says that it is a blessing to be reviled and persecuted, and He says that we should rejoice not because we take some kind of masochistic delight in being mistreated. No, Jesus says we are to rejoice and be exceeding glad because great is our reward in Heaven. 

When you are training for a competition or a fight, you do not rejoice in the pain of training simply for the pain itself. You rejoice in the pain because you know what it’s for: it’s preparing You for glory. The Bible says that this is true of all hardship in this life: these light afflictions are working for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17). Again, this doesn’t mean we do not sometimes have work to do to defend what God has entrusted to us, but we must care and defend obediently. And the central characteristic that we are commanded to take up is joy. If joy is not driving your response and resistance, it isn’t a Christian response or Christian resistance. Joy is what allows us to walk away whistling, and joy is what allows us to see the appropriate response. We must not be fearful or wrathful. Jesus commands us to rejoice.

Photo by Caju Gomes on Unsplash

Everyone Who Comes is Welcome

The biblical gospel insists that man is lost in his sins. He doesn’t want out, and therefore he is enslaved to his own lusts and evil desires. He is dead in his trespasses and sins. Therefore he cannot come to Christ unless Christ draws him. 

So Jesus said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out… For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day… No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (Jn. 6:37, 40, 44).

So we preach that no one can come to the Father, unless the Father draws Him. But if the Father has given a sinner into the hand of Jesus, that sinner will most certainly look on Jesus the Son of God and have eternal life. And Jesus will never cast that sinner out but will most certainly raise him up on the last day.

We do not preach that Jesus is sitting in heaven hoping that some people will believe. We do not preach that God is dependent on us for salvation. No, we preach that God sent His Son into the world to secure the salvation of a great company, a company so large that it can be rightly termed “the world.” Jesus did not die in hopes of potentially saving the world. No, God the Father in eternity past determined to save the world through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, and therefore everyone who looks upon Him and believes has eternal life. 

So the invitation is this: Do you want in? Then come, you will not be turned away. Do you want eternal life? Then come, there is a seat waiting for you. Do you want to know Christ, to walk with Christ? Then come, you wouldn’t want to know Christ unless the Father who sent Him had drawn you. There are no halfway invitations. God does not play games. The invitation goes out to all that everyone who comes to Him will be saved. And everyone who hears and believes is most welcome.  

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Marissa Daeger on Unsplash