Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 36

Gracious Excellence

We live in a sexual cesspool of a world, and the lies of the devil combine with real guilt and shame to cripple and handicap God’s people. No one in this room is untouched by sexual sin: the harm and damage and guilt and shame of pornography and lust, fornication and adultery, homosexuality and sexual abuse of every sort. And on top of all of that, we have the audacity to get married and have kids teach them to do better than we did. And the temptation is despair. How can I teach them to do better when I wasn’t innocent, when I made mistakes, when my parents made mistakes? And in that despair, many Christians wallow in their past sin and frequently end up teaching their children to despair: there’s nothing to be done, we all fail, and lo and behold they do, a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy.

The other temptation is to pretend to have extremely high standards, and enforce them legalistically and perfectionistically, with a harsh and heavy hand, even though everyone in the room knows they are impossible standards to meet. But this just creates another form of despair. Since no one can meet the standard, the kids give up trying, and lo and behold, they fall into sin. 

What we are aiming for as Christians is gracious excellence – high standards built in the only place where high standards actually work, on the blood and righteousness of Jesus. The only way high standards are real gifts is when they are built on grace. This grace is the grace of forgiveness, but it is also the grace of sanctification, the grace of true obedience from the heart. 

So how has Christ loved you? He came for you. He took your sin and guilt and shame, and all your romantic failures, sexual sin, all of your parenting failures, and He died for them all. There is now therefore, no condemnation, for those who are in Christ Jesus. You are clean. You are righteous. You are pure. And God rejoices over your purity because it is the purity of Jesus.

The devil says, how can you expect your kids to do better than you when you were no innocent dove. And the answer is: Jesus died for all my sin, and He died in such a way that I might stand completely innocent before my God and therefore completely innocent before my kids. That doesn’t mean lying about the past, but it also doesn’t mean acting like your sin still clings to you. It really is gone. And therefore, you can teach your children to be more faithful, more honorable, and wiser than you were because we stand in God’s grace.

Photo by Shawnee D on Unsplash

Congregational “Amen”

One of the striking things we do as a congregation is our vigorous congregational “Amen” after our prayers and songs. Saying “amen” after a prayer may seem a little more normal, but why do we say “amen” after our hymns and psalms? Well, first off because our songs are prayers. They are simply sung prayers. So if we say “amen” at the end of our prayers, it’s actually strange that we wouldn’t at the end of our hymns. 

But the word “amen” doesn’t just mean “now we’re done.” “Amen” means “yes, I affirm this, and let it be so,” but given the context where we saying this before God and one another. “Amen” is really more of a covenantal oath. In Dt. 27, the Levites proclaimed the curses of the covenant and after each one it says, “And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.” This is why when the congregation is asked to affirm that they receive new members and renew their own membership vows or when you are asked at a baptism to promise to assist parents in bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, you are asked to affirm that vow by saying “Amen.” Likewise, when Nehemiah renewed the covenant with Israel, all the people answered by saying “Amen, Amen.” (Neh. 8:6, cf. 5:13). Sections of the psalter end with an “Amen,” and one of the psalms exhorts all the people to say “Amen” (Ps. 106:48). 

So our practice is to say that hearty “amen” together after prayers and songs, and when we do that, we are binding ourselves together and to God in a solemn, joyful oath. We are swearing that what we have just said/sung is true and we are offering it up in honest faith to God asking for his blessing. We do not want this to become frivolous or mindless or some kind of vain repetition. So as we pay these vows to God, don’t mumble, but let it ring out with solemn joy. The Lord is God. The Lord is God. And all God’s people said, Amen!

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Hot With Blessing

“You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you…” (Dt. 8) 

Notice the positive command here: eat and be full. God wants His people to enjoy His gifts and be satisfied with them and so bless Him. And the clear implication is that God loves to bless those who are full of blessing. Do you want God’s blessing? Then bless Him for all that you have. Rejoice in whatever He has given. This isn’t some kind of lever or mechanism, but it is a covenant relationship.

When Abraham went through the land of Promise, He built altars to the Lord and worshiped Him in particular places. Part of Abraham’s worship at those altars was thanking God for the land before it was fully given. And centuries later, it’s striking that in some of the very places where Abraham built altars Israel won significant battles. In the very places where Abraham rejoiced, God poured out more blessing. God loves to bless in those places where we are blessing Him the loudest. 

So, every week we come here to bless the Lord, to say thank you for all that He has done for us, but do not be mistaken. God is not here saying that if you’re thankful enough you can have some bread and wine. No, God says, here, have another bite of blessing. Eat and be full. Drink and be full. He simply gives. And why? So that we will bless Him, so that He will bless us more. So as you come, thank Him for particular things. Build altars in particular places, paint those targets hot with blessing. And so, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Luke Pennystan on Unsplash

3 Christian Business Principles

As our community grows and as God blesses, we will face the challenges that come with that. One of the wonderful areas of blessing and growth is all the new business ventures, and so we need to be praying and thinking about the challenges that will come with it. So here are three biblical principles to be meditating on as you do business with one another in the community. 

First, always seek to bless your brother or sister more because they are a fellow Christian – never look for or expect a deal or a discount – as buyer or a seller. A truly free market actually is a gift-giving exchange. But the accent is on the giving, not you getting other people to give to you. So, if you need the goods or services of someone else, you should want to give as big of a gift as you can in exchange for it. You should want to bless them more so they can give even more. And if you are giving the good or service, give a good gift, high quality, excellent, and thoroughly honest.

Second, write all business agreements down. Do not say that since they are Kirkers you don’t need to write it down. No, we are people of the written Word. God wrote everything down for us because we are the kind of people who forget. 

Third, don’t assume you know anything about your brother’s situation. This applies to what you might be tempted to think your brother can afford to pay or give, but this also applies to various business decisions, whether it’s your competitor or the fact that somebody in the church went with your competitor. Don’t assume the worst; don’t assume anything. Life is complex, and remember that great Pauline principle: mind your own business, in every sense of the word.  

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Mother Church

In Galatians, Paul says that the Jerusalem above is free and is the mother of us all. As we are seeking to receive the staggering growth of our church, we are wanting to do so with real wisdom and grace and honor. In Proverbs it says that the law of our mother is to be like a crown on our heads. This applies to sons and daughters in families, but it also applies to churches and church planting. 

In a culture that does not honor motherhood at all, it cannot be surprising that this has affected our view of the Church and church planting. Our standards are incredibly low. So the goal of our additional services is to allow for all the additional growth while holding together as long as we reasonably can. This is not so we can avoid the good challenges of church planting, it’s so we can face them when we really are ready. The goal of parenting is not to keep children home forever, but turning a twelve year old loose on the world isn’t usually a good idea either. 

Part of the way you know the modern evangelical church hardly understands the gravity of all of this is by the fact that it is relatively rare to hear an evangelical call the church “our mother.” But this is exactly what Paul does and what our Reformed fathers did. The Jerusalem above is free, and she is the mother of us all. 

But it really is like a Sarah or a Mary. The Church all by itself does not have the power to conceive living children. But the Spirit poured out at Pentecost hovers over the waters of this New Creation, through the Word proclaimed and sprinkled and eaten, and our Mother the Church conceives children of promise, children like the stars of heaven. And that is worthy of great honor. 

Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

Victim Virus

This table is God’s promised presence with you all the time. Christ is present here now by the power of His Spirit, but it is not a localized presence, as though when you leave it fades, or you’re getting farther away. His presence here is a special, covenantal presence, but it’s a presence that is dispersed and ubiquitous. Christ reveals Himself here in clarity, but the thing that He is revealing is that He promises to go with you, out from this place. He will be with you this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow, all the time, wherever you go. He will never leave you, nor forsake you. 

How do you know this? Look, He gave Himself for You. What kind of friend is Jesus? What kind of shepherd is Jesus? He is the good shepherd, who gave His life for His sheep. How could you think He would ever leave you if He died for your sins and purchased you for His own possession? 

So don’t think of this table as the place where you wallow in how weak you have been, how you have failed, and all the ways you could have done better. This table is the place where God Himself meets You and cheers you on. He doesn’t invite you here to scold you. He invites you here to encourage you. 

You know we are surrounded in a victim culture, everyone taking a fall for this hardship or that one, claiming mistreatment and prejudice and injustice, and there are subtle forms of the same victim-virus that can creep into Christian thinking. My marriage just can’t be that good. I’ve failed too many times. My parents were divorced. I was abused. She was adopted. He has special needs. Things are always harder for me.

I’m not saying there are not real hardships in this world, but what I am saying is that if Christ is for you, who can be against you? If Christ is with you, then whatever He brings to you is for you to conquer. Whatever He puts before you is for you to succeed in. And therefore, this is the attitude you must have for yourself and for one another. She may have a difficulty, but in Christ, that is for her to crush. He may have some great hardship, but in Jesus, you should be cheering him on to succeed. You may have fallen down, but Christ is here, for you, so that you might get back up. Here is the sure promise of God to be with you, to fight for you, to carry you, to cheer you on, every step of the way.

So, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Victor Freitas on Unsplash

Mini-Reformation

As a community, we pray for reformation and revival regularly. We do so because we believe that we serve the God who gives reformation and revival, and it is not something we can conjure up or manufacture. When it comes, it will be entirely by God’s sovereign grace and nothing we will have done will add up to what He does. This is the way of grace. 

Nevertheless, God loves it when His people stand on their tip toes in anticipation. If God’s grace of revival is like flying to the top of the Eiffel Tower, no sane man thinks that standing on his tiptoes has done much to get him to the top, but every believing man should know that God loves to give that kind of blessing when His people are eager for it and He gives the eagerness. 

So given that, what does it look like to be eager for revival, to stand on your tiptoes, asking God for reformation? The center of true, biblical reformation and revival is repentance. Repentance means turning: turning away from sin and turning toward Christ and obedience. 

You have heard us say before that sin piles up. People don’t usually just wake up one day and decide to commit adultery or murder and ruin their lives. Usually, they have been practicing with many smaller sins, growing hard-hearted and arrogant, and then they fall into that pit they have dug for themselves. But obedience is actually something like that only in reverse: when you first become a Christian, you start obeying in little ways, and those little acts of repentance and obedience actually make room for you to see new ways and bigger ways to obey Christ. Just as sin begets bigger and gnarlier sins, so too obedience begets bigger and more glorious obedience. 

So here is the point: do you want to see reformation and revival in our land? Ask God to show you some new obedience this week, and don’t be surprised if it’s something far smaller than you thought. Don’t be surprised if it’s something like doing the dishes cheerfully or remembering to pray with your wife. But don’t think it’s too small for you. Remember that small obedience is the only path to big obedience: he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. And a small act of repentance is a mini-reformation.

Photo by Simone Impei on Unsplash

Resurrection Playground

Christ is risen, and He rose in this world with a human body in order that all things might be made new. The center of this new creation is the forgiveness of sins, but that is merely the great and glorious foundation. Remember that Jesus Christ is the Creator of the Universe, and so it is no accident that Jesus is the One re-creating the universe in history. 

Jesus rose so that we might enjoy His world with Him forever. Jesus rose so that we might study the stars, so that we might see His glory in the heavens forever. Jesus rose so that we might watch the birds’ swooping formations and fluttering and listen to their singing and teach some of them talk to us. Christ rose so that we might dive into the sea and see His handiwork, tiny and enormous, beautiful and strange, darting and scuttling through waters, His vast colorful gardens of algae and coral reefs. Christ rose so that we might walk on the edge of continents and feel the sand between our toes. He rose so that we might hike mountains, smelling cool, dank forests, losing our breath, tasting sweat. He rose so that we might watch insects on a sidewalk, or buzzing in the flowers, squirrels chattering in trees, buffalo lumbering in a field. 

He rose so that we might live, so that we might taste and see that He is good. No, literally, that we might taste chocolate and know that our Redeemer lives: the smell of coffee roasting in the morning, steaks on a grill, beer on a summer afternoon, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cold milk, and crème brûlée. But don’t forget music and singing, dancing and love making. Don’t forget holding hands, hugs, tickling, braiding hair, newborn babies and toddlers and teenagers and newlyweds and grandpas and grandmas, and rain and snow and wind and mudpies and sunshine falling through windows and lazy dogs sleeping in it. And what else?

Jesus rose so that this whole world might become the Garden of God again, the playground of God for His people. For as many as receive Him, He has given them the power to become children of God. Christ rose so that everything and anything in this world that Christ made, might be delighted in because He made it and He loves it. Christ rose so that we might play and discover and invent and enjoy His world with Him forever.

Christ is risen indeed.

Photo by Angelo Jesus on Unsplash

Truth & Lies

Good Friday 2021 Homily
“Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?” (Jn. 18:37-38)

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32).

Freedom and truth go together, hand in hand. Freedom is not merely lack of constraint or the power of choice. Because it if were, truth would have no bearing on freedom. You wouldn’t need truth to be free. But Jesus says that you cannot be free apart from the truth. The truth is what makes a man free. And therefore, lies are what enslave. Lies are captivity. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge…” (Is. 5:13).

The truth is what makes people free because then they may act and live in a way that corresponds to reality – the world as God actually made it. Truth is solid ground. Truth is true all the time, everywhere. Truth is granite. It holds fast. Truth reaches all the way to heaven. If something is really true, it is even true to God. Francis Schaeffer called this “true truth.” It’s true all the way the down, all the way up, all the time, everywhere, absolutely. So we may build on it. We may live in light of it. In this way, we may say that freedom is simply living honestly before God.

But a lie wants the world to be different than it actually is. If you lie about what happened yesterday, you are lying about history. If you lie about who you are, what she said, what he did, what you have done, what belongs to you, you’re attempting to twist the world into your control. A lie lays claim to rule the world. It may be a very small lie, a very small part of the world. But in that one place, a lie declares war on God and His world. And you cannot start only a very small war with the Ruler of the Universe because to declare war, any war against God is fundamentally to declare war on all of it. 

A lie is also a false claim to absolute truth. It’s false, but it necessarily collides with God and His truth. Therefore, lies divide. And lies divide in the same way that truth divides. Either you believe or you do not. A lie makes an objective claim that people will either live according to it or not, just like the truth. But a lie hobbles you, hampers you, and ultimately enslaves you. In this way, a lie is always necessarily violent and coercive and full of malice. 

“A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin” (Prov. 26:28). While God often restrains the impact of many lies, they all fundamentally are at war with God and His world and therefore are always ultimately attempts to ruin everything. 

You may have seen the story on CNN this last week reporting on Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive orders in South Dakota prohibiting biological males from playing in women’s athletics. Quite apart from whatever is going on in South Dakota, in the article, the CNN reporter wrote: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” And as far as I know the writer still has his job at CNN, as do his bosses.

There are of course the surface lies about whether it’s possible to know someone’s gender identity at birth and whether there has been any consensus on assigning sex. But there are other lies underneath those lies: the assumption that a gender “identity” is even a thing to be discerned or that sex is something that is “assigned.” But underneath those lies are additional lies about the glory of male and female, the glory of the image of God. And beneath it all is a seething hatred of God, His image, and His world. But what is ironic is that all of these lies are begging for submission, begging for consensus. There is not consensus about whether someone is a boy or a girl, he claims, beckoning everyone to agree with him. 

Lies always invite belief. The truth invites belief and freedom; every lie invites belief and slavery. But of course lies do not advertise the slavery part. Lies are almost always full of flattery. If you eat this fruit, you will become like god, knowing good and evil. 

“For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue” (Ps. 5:9). Speaking of Israel, Psalm 78 says, “Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues.” Flattery and lies go together. But the flattery and the lies are always a set up: “A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet” (Prov. 29:5). 

The set up is this: if you don’t go along with my lie, there will be consequences, maybe initially just awkwardness, no friendliness, no compliments, no flattery. And if it’s just one person, that can be odd or challenging, but what we are witnessing in our day is the multiplication of lies on such a massive scale and widespread belief in them, such that now, to not believe the lies is to be considered a threat to the peace and unity of society. If you don’t believe that a man can put on a dress and become a woman, if you don’t believe that two men can be married, you are now a threat. You are a threat to the attempt to remake the world with lies. You are a threat to the consensus.

And many Christians say, why won’t they just leave us alone? You can do your thing over there, and we will do ours. But this is to radically misunderstand and underestimate the claims of truth and lies. And as the lies multiply, the liars frequently understand far better than the truth-tellers, that lies are absolute claims. Lies are necessarily absolute claims because they contradict God’s absolute truth. 

This is why Christians must hate all lies. All lies, all deception, all falsehood is an attack on the living God, His world, and His people. Liars may not be consciously aware of the full extent of their rebellion, but it is there, all the same. Lies aim at the destruction of everything. To put up with a little bit deception is like putting up with a little bit of poison, a little be of nuclear fallout, a little bit of murder.  

So tonight, we gather with Christians throughout the world to celebrate and proclaim the truth. We gather to sing and pray and hear once more the Truth of the crucifixion of the Son of God. But this is not just a small truth. It is the Truth, the truest Truth of them all. That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And that Son, who is the Truth of God, willingly laid His life down for the sins of the world. The Truth became a Man so that the lies of men might condemn Him, slander Him, mock Him, beat Him, and kill Him. And that True Man let them do it because He intended to take all their lies, all our lies and crush them. 

If you are a descendent of Adam and Eve, you have been born into a world full of lies. And you have trafficked in them from time to time, whether in the world around you, whether in your own heart, or in your words, or in what you have been willing to think or do or believe. And that world of lies is not freedom. It is only chains, and snares, and threats, and ruin. 

But Jesus came to set you free. He came to set this world free. He did not come to flatter you. He did not come to tell you lies. He came to tell you the honest truth, which is that you are the problem, your sin and rebellion are the problem, and you have committed treason against God and you deserve to die. But the truth is also that God is love. He is not the love of Hallmark movies or Disney. He is not the fake love that is only sentiment and feeling and emotion. He is not the fake love of mask mandates only wanting everyone to feel good or look like He was doing good. No, He is true love, truthful love, honest love, and He came to actually do good. He came to do what needed to be done, not what anyone thought He should have done. He came to take to the penalty for your sin. He came to bear God’s wrath against your rebellion. He came to tell the truth about your lies. He came to suffer what you deserved. 

And so He did. And it is finished. If you look to the Truth on the Tree, the Lamb of God, you can see your sins there. You can see all of your lies there. You can see your guilt and shame there, dead on the cross. And you should also notice that Jesus is no longer there. He is alive. All of this is true. It is true all the way down, and all the way up, and all the way into the throne room of God, now, and every day, and forever. And all the lies in the world cannot change it. Nothing can take it away. Nothing can separate you from that love.  

And so, all of this is why Christians must not put up with lies: whether pronouns, or history, or creation, or sex, or marriage, or money, or Christ. Christians may not go along with any lies. Lies are at war with God. Lies are at war with His Cross, with His Christ, with His church. And so we are at war with all lies because we have been made free by the truth.

Photo by Joey Kyber on Unsplash

Strong Delusions & Prophetic Prayer

Introduction
Pastor Doug Wilson preached a really helpful sermon this last Lord’s Day on the role of prophets and prophetic ministry, which if you weren’t here for, you really should go watch or listen to. The very short version is that prophets have two major roles: they speak to the people on behalf of God – this part we are familiar with, foretelling what is to come, but often forthtelling about their sorry state of sinning, idolatry, and folly and God’s impending judgment. The second half of prophetic ministry is speaking to God on behalf of the people, most importantly at that point in the prophetic cycle when God’s wrath is beginning to justly fall on His people. I think I first heard this from James Jordan or Peter Leithart, who I believe were drawing off of the Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel, suggesting that prophets are members of God’s council. We see this in Abraham’s intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses’ intercession for Israel after the golden calf episode, and all of it culminates in Christ Himself who stands in the breach for His people, accepting the cup of judgment in Gethsemane, suffering on the cross, averting the wrath of God, causing God to turn from His course of action. 

Now, as it happens, I heard Doug say something else that I thought connected to all this. I caught an Ask Doug episode where Ben Merkle asked him what folks should be doing with their time and energy in the 2020’s given everything. Doug began by pointing out that everyone has been accustomed to asking, “How much longer can the madness continue?” And the answer has been repeatedly, “Apparently longer.” Just when you think the homo-madness couldn’t get any more insane, the tranny madness says, “hold my beer.” Just when you think the abortion bloodshed couldn’t be worse, Drag Queen Story Hour and Pedophiles-R-Us spring into action. Just when the COVID Krazy couldn’t be more mindless, Dr. Fauci suggests two masks and so on. And Doug develops a very helpful answer from this broader point and defends a postmillennial eschatology all at the same time. But putting these two points together (the need for both sides of the prophetic ministry and the “Lo, the madness descendeth to yet another level” motif), helps to explain how the madness is not merely hard-hearted rebellion (it is that), but how it is also Divinely inflicted and therefore how it can keep going on. So first, a few texts demonstrating that God sometimes sends madness.  

Several Texts on Madness
“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee… The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart” (Dt. 28:15, 28).

“I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not” (Is. 66:4). 

“…because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:10-11). 

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened…Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves… For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even the women did change the natural use into that which is against nature…” (Rom. 1:21, 24, 26).

This point regarding homosexuality, I also learned from Doug years ago: Homosexuality is not merely a bad sin that may incur the judgment of God, Romans 1 teaches that homosexuality is itself a judgment of madness that God gives peoples over to. When God’s judgment falls, He sends strong delusions of folly and fear and perversion so that people believe all sorts of lies and live according to them, so that they will be damned, because they love unrighteousness. If this is the case with homosexuality and fear explicitly, it is no great stretch to apply this to the tranny madness, fiscal madness, covid madness, and so on. We are being handed over to this madness so that God can send our nation to Hell. 

Hellish Judgments
The fact that this madness is divinely inflicted judgment from God suggests that it is a type or preview of Hell itself, which can help explain how it can keep descending to deeper and deeper levels, how it can go on and on (and on) — how the three-eyed monster can grow a fourth eye and sprout hair. The Christian doctrine of Hell, the eternal, conscious torment of human souls, is an awful, sobering glory. But my point here is that it goes on forever, and if that is possible, then the type of that judgment in this world, in history, can surely go on for far longer than we could possibly imagine. 

Now, there is also plenty of evidence throughout Scripture that God remembers mercy, even in the midst of His wrath, and if Jesus is the Great Prophet who stood in the breach for us on the cross and who now stands before God in Heaven and intercedes on our behalf and on behalf of all the elect, we have good reason to hope that God will relent from His current fierceness at some point. And yet, that doesn’t seem to be reason at all for apathy or laziness in the meantime. The pattern throughout Scripture is this assumption of human responsibility, even in the midst of God’s great and terrible sovereignty. There is never any conflict between Divine sovereignty and human responsibility. As Charles Spurgeon once put it, when asked how he reconciled these two claims, “I never reconcile friends.” What we are told is that the secret things belong to God (e.g. the eternal decrees), but those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever (Dt. 29:29). 

Therefore, what will we do with the revelation of God’s fierce wrath being poured out on our nation? It might seem that we are still in the relatively early stages – we are still relatively wealthy and prosperous. But what is it called, when a nation willingly butchers 60 million of its own children and counting? What is it called when we harvest their organs? It’s utter and complete madness. 

We are not at all far from another form of madness found in the curses of Dt. 28:

“And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee… The tender and delicate woman among you… her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear…” (Dt. 28:53, 56-57). 

We are not yet knowingly eating our own children, but we are apparently being vaccinated with stuff that was harvested off of our murdered children. While Israel was threatened with the curse of madness that might eat its own children in the midst of a terrible siege, the flailing desperation of starvation, we are harvesting our babies in the midst of fatness and gluttony and obesity. Perhaps we are further down the judgment hole than we might imagine, and perhaps it goes down much further than we can even fathom.

Conclusion
And so, what must we do? We cannot argue ourselves out of this mental state, this complete cultural mental breakdown. We cannot run someone for office who will put this right. You cannot reason with madness. But this is my main point: The One who is doing this, all of this, is God Himself. He is behind this strong delusion; this raving, drunken lunacy is from His righteous hand. God is the One doing this to us. He has given us over to it. And therefore, He is the only One who will hear us. It will not stop until God determines to stop. 

As we noted above, there is no conflict between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, and therefore, there is no conflict or tension between God’s sovereignty and any secondary causes or means. God can determine to relent through the faithful preaching of a minister who simply proclaims the cross of Jesus and Reformation breaks out. Or God could determine to relent by allowing the West to crumble into ruins and one by one the people wake up from their stupors. Or God could determine to hear the desperate prayers of His people to please stop the madness.

So none of this means that we should not continue the first half of the prophetic ministry, declaring what God says about sin and the judgment that results from it, resisting lies and defending Christian liberty, but this does mean that we must begin to give far greater attention to the second half of the prophetic ministry, declaring to God that His reputation is on the line, pleading with Him not to destroy the righteous with the wicked, and most importantly lifting up the cross to God, reminding Him of the work and reputation of Christ and His glory, and going boldly before the throne of grace in our time of need. 

Photo by Yosh Ginsu on Unsplash