Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 37

This Week & Every Week

Today is Palm Sunday. Today we celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, as the Davidic King, the Son of Abraham, the Seed of the Woman come to do battle with our Ancient Foe, the Serpent, that Dragon of Old, the Accuser of the brethren. 

Jesus came to Jerusalem to wage war. He came as a conquering King. But He came, knowing that the Dragon is plated with great armor, and there was only one way to take him down. So Jesus came to take the accusations of the Dragon, to take them all on Himself. He came to take all the condemnation onto Himself. He came so that all the darts, all the jabs, all the bites, all the stabs, all the charges might be laid on Him. And so they were, and all the charges, all the broken laws, all the ordinances, all the guilt, all the shame was nailed to the cross. 

And this is how Jesus spoiled the principalities and power, how he made a spectacle of them, how He triumphed over them. This is why there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation because all the condemnation was laid on Him. There is no accusation because the Accuser brought all the accusations and they were piled on Jesus. And He suffered and bled and died until they were all completely paid for. God’s perfect justice was done on every last one. The debts were paid. And now for all who are in Christ Jesus, there is only release, there is only the declaration: not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. 

This is what we celebrate today and every day. This is what we meditate on this week and every week. Our King came to Jerusalem for us. He came and fought the dragon for us. He came and gave His life for us. And now we are free. Now we are innocent. Now we are accepted in the beloved. Now we are His forever. And so we do what the crowds did on that day. We do what the children did in the temple. We shout and we sing: Hosanna. Hosanna. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Our sins are washed away. Our debts have all been paid. 

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Holy & Catholic Church

Occasionally, folks wonder what it means when we confess that we believe in the “holy catholic church” in the Apostles’ Creed. Wait – I thought we were protestant. We’re not catholics, are we? Well, it’s true that we’re not Roman Catholics – which is why if you check our bulletin, we don’t capitalize “catholic” – we’re not under the Bishop of Rome or hold to the peculiar doctrines of that church. 

But the word “catholic” by itself simply means “universal” or “the whole.” It comes from two Greek words which literally meant “concerning the whole.” So we do believe in the universal church, and because the universal church is the Bride of Christ, it is holy, sanctified, set apart to Christ. When we say we believe in the holy catholic church we mean that we believe that Jesus has set apart people to Himself all over the world, throughout history. Everyone who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, and believes that God raised Him from the dead is part of this universal church. Baptism is the sign of membership in that one catholic church, and the Lord’s Supper is our communion in the Body of Christ – and we mean Body in two ways. We mean Body of Christ in the sense that Christ Himself feeds all of us with Himself, what this bread represents. But we also mean Body of Christ in the sense that all who believe are part of Christ. All who believe are in Christ, and therefore, they are His body, they belong to Him. 

It’s no accident that the Creed puts several things together at the end: the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. All of this goes together. All who trust in Jesus as their Savior receive the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit unites us to God and to one another. This is part of what it means to be part of the holy catholic church, and this is the communion of the saints. We have this communion with all true Christians fundamentally because our sins have been forgiven, and we are all waiting together for the resurrection of our bodies and everlasting life together with Christ and one another.

Do you believe? Then come. Are you baptized? Then come. Are your sins all forgiven? Then come and welcome. Are you part of the Body? Then come. There is bread for all who are bread. Does the Spirit yearn inside of you for the resurrection and everlasting life? Then come. Do you love the saints here and everywhere throughout the world? Then come.

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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The Party Started Right

One of the most important factors in establishing fellowship in a family is the fellowship of husband and wife. As you welcome children into your home, you are either welcoming them into a healthy fellowship and warm friendship or else you are bringing them into the middle of controversy, striving, bitterness, and rivalry. This is how children can either be a great blessing or a great curse – depending on how they are received. Children are usually multipliers. They multiply what you already have in your home. 

So what are you multiplying? Is there joy in your marriage? Warmth, gladness, good humor, friendship? Then be encouraged – even if you are still in the toddler trenches – as you preserve that good fellowship with your husband or your wife, you really are preparing them to join you in the party. Pretty soon they will be your assistants, your friends, truly your favorite people to be with. And in the meantime, there should be plenty of warmth, and laughter, and gladness, between all the spankings. 

But if you are not in fellowship with your spouse, you cannot expect your children to do anything other than multiply your grief. If your home is a place of constant tension, they will only multiply the tension. If your home is a place of grievances and bitterness, children will only multiply the grievances and bitterness. 

We live in a world where there is no perfect home, no sinless family. There is sin in all of our families, just like there can be messes in any one of our homes at any given moment. The decisive factor is not having your act together. The decisive factor is the blood of Jesus. This is why you can have a family that has a lot of natural friendliness that ends up cold and bitter without Jesus. And you can have a family that has a lot of natural sinful baggage that ends up full of joy and loyalty – how’d that happen? – only by the blood of Jesus. And that means confessing your sins and forgiving one another, regularly.

So whether you’ve inherited generations of faithfulness or whether you are just starting out with Jesus, start at the center of your family, start with your marriage. Confess your sins, forgive one another from the heart, and cultivate joy and friendship there. Have the kind of party going with your spouse that your children (and grandchildren) can’t wait to join. 

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Jesus Alone

One of the striking things to many visitors and newer folks is the fact that our worship service is liturgical – that is, it follows a discernable pattern every week and is fairly planned out and regimented. You may notice that much of what is said and prayed has been written down before hand, and we encourage the men that help lead in the congregational prayers to prepare their prayers beforehand. 

One of the great lies of our modern culture is that spontaneous is most authentic: saying what just comes to you is most honest and sincere and meaningful. But that isn’t what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that our hearts are not naturally good; they are insidious, deceptive, squirrely, and often rather shallow. Even the hearts of believers need to be disciplined and trained. Following your heart is a great way to get into all kinds of trouble. We follow Jesus and His word and constantly check our hearts and thoughts and feelings against God’s Word. 

So this is part of why we try to put thought into how we worship God. We do want our worship to be heartfelt and sincere, but we also want to be thoughtful about how we approach God. “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few” (Eccl. 5:2). If the Old Testament worshipers had to take great care at Mt. Sinai and the Tabernacle, Hebrews says that the stakes are even higher in the New Testament: “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28-29).

When a man writes down a love poem for his wife, most would not complain that it doesn’t seem very authentic since he wrote it down. Or if a wedding ceremony is planned out carefully, we don’t usually complain that the couple was just pretending to like each other. No, if they just winged it, we would rightly wonder if they actually meant it. So too with our worship of the living God. Of course, it is true that anything can become routine or mundane and meaningless, by just going through the motions. And that is why we do not trust in our liturgy or in our planning. We must trust in Jesus and Jesus alone – always look to Jesus.

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Faith Sees the Chain of Command

When the centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant, he asked Jesus to just say the word because he knew that Jesus had that authority (Mt. 8:5-13). The centurion explained that he was a man under authority, and he also had soldiers under him. In other words, he knew how authority worked, and Jesus marveled saying that He had not seen such faith in Israel. 

The thing you don’t want to miss in this episode is the connection between faith and authority, faith and submission. The centurion said he knew how authority worked, and he knew that Jesus had authority over his sick servant. And Jesus said that was great faith. 

When you think of being under authority and obedience to authority, you may be more inclined to think of humility, but Jesus says you should also think of faith. This works in at least a couple of directions. First, it takes faith to submit to and obey lawful authority. It takes faith to obey your parents. It takes faith for a wife to obey her husband. It takes faith to obey pastors and civil magistrates. But this same faith should not be narrowly construed. Faith sees the whole chain of command, just like the centurion. The centurion’s faith recognized his own true authority, situated above some and below others. And therefore, faith sees above and below other true authorities. 

While wisdom really must be exercised, this means that sometimes faith disregards or disobeys one authority in submission to a higher authority. This is why the Biblical commands to obey human authorities always include the prepositional phrase “in the Lord.” This is the freedom to obey authorities when they are leading you to obey Christ and in things indifferent. But whenever an authority would lead away from Christ, in disobedience to Christ, faith sees Christ standing above that authority and sees the disastrous effects of that disobedience on those under that authority – and faith obeys Christ, even if the authority demands otherwise. 

Hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And in this case, faith sees Christ standing above every lawful authority. And Christ sets you free to obey every lawful order, and He sets you free to disregard every unlawful order. 

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Criminal Activity

“So, to begin with, I would like to break several laws in various states and countries by stating simply: men and women are different.”

– No Mere Mortals, 44.

www.nomeremarriage.com

Jesus, the Good Friend

Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (Jn. 14:1-2).

Every week we sit down at this table, and we share bread and wine with Christ and one another. In this way, we are companions. A “companion” literally means “with bread.” A companion is someone you eat with. It’s a little easier to see how that works with everyone you see around you – God is knitting us into a body. But it’s a little harder to explain or think about how we have fellowship with Jesus here at this table. We are eating bread and drinking wine, but what about Jesus? Is He eating with us? It’s harder to think about being friends with someone you can’t see.  

But the answer is, yes, we are sharing this meal with Jesus. We are sharing this meal with Jesus because He started this meal in the upper room before His crucifixion, and He said to keep doing this as His memorial. Of course, if you sit down to dinner with someone and they get up and leave in the middle of the meal, you wouldn’t usually call that a really great time of fellowship. It would seem to be interrupted. But a great deal depends on what they got up to do, and what they bring with them when they return. 

Right after Jesus gave us this meal, He was betrayed, falsely condemned, beaten, spit on, mocked, and nailed to a cross – for the sins of the world. He needed to be excused from this table in order to pay for all of our sins. He needed to go because He is the friend of sinners. Three days later He came back from the dead. And after sharing this meal again with His disciples, He said He was going away to prepare a place for us so that we might live with Him forever. 

In other words, we do have fellowship with Jesus here because everything about this meal is His friendship toward us. He died in our place, rose again for us, and now He is in Heaven and He ever lives to intercede for us. Jesus is praying for you right now. He is preparing everything so that we might live with Him forever. He is the good friend, the faithful friend, the friend of sinners. Are you a sinner? Then come. Come and welcome, to Jesus Christ.

LGBT Dry Heaves

Introduction
Just started reading Carl Trueman’s new book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and while this may be a point that he will develop later, I cannot help but stop and note a few helpful dots that connected in my mind in just the first part of the book. And let me just add that I may be connecting dots that he does or does not intend to connect, but here I go with my stubby pencil. 

A New Religion
First, let me state my conclusion and then try to piece together the premises. My thesis/conclusion is that this convulsive LGBT dry heaves (and the attendant cancel culture) – as has been pointed out by a growing number of people with modicums of sanity left – has almost entirely replaced and assumed the position of what many past generations would have reckoned a “religion.” I don’t mean this as derogatory (at least not yet), just descriptive. If you described in broad strokes the shared values and beliefs, the cultural/political involvement, the moral claims, even the symbols and rituals and uniforms of this attempted traditional values exorcism, e.g. banning Dr. Suess, etc. – many of our ancestors would assume you’re talking about some new religion. 

I suspect that this is why many Americans have been willing to allow so much of this secular-sexual-identity “evangelism,” especially during Holy Super Bowl Sunday. We have been catechized in religious toleration for so long, such that many instinctively give room to new religions. And to the extent that religious toleration and freedom is the fruit of deeply Christian instincts, we may have a horrifically naïve yet still “Christian” for all that, sentiment that is tolerating the current cultural jihad. And while it is true that the tolerance gestapo has increasingly cancelled every semblance of the traditional Christian sexual and moral ethic, there may be a morbid sort of curiosity watching the clown riot marching down the street. 

The Inconsistencies
Part of what confuses and frustrates many thinking, biblically literate Christians is the seemingly obvious inconsistencies in the secular religion. You can hump anything you want, except not kids. That’d be evil. But drag queens can groom kids in public libraries. If you’re against that, you’re a modern day Puritan witch-burner. Also, people can decide to change their sex or gender or sexual orientation (so brave!), but people cannot change the color of their skin or even pretend to (that’s so disgusting, you culturally appropriating bigot!). And of course, Amazon can cancel people they don’t agree with, but if a baker doesn’t want to make a wedding cake for two dudes, there’s going to be trouble. You can loot and riot and burn down a police station in the name of racial justice, but if a protest gets kind of obnoxious at the Capitol, you’re a domestic terrorist. And the list goes on. If you want to rap about niggas and bitches and hoes, that’s artistic and might win you some prestigious award. But if you use any of those words in any other context, you’ll get #metoo’d to kingdom come, lose your job, and you and all your relatives will be sent to a reeducation camp. 

The temptation is to see this secular religion as a bad, dollar store knockoff religion, like a drunken clown with a half his costume on, trying to ride his unicycle. And well, it is kind of like that. It’s like several barrels of monkeys found a room full of crack and went on a snorting spree, and they all got elected to office and hired as media execs. 

Perverted Presuppositionalism
But here’s where my thesis/conclusion comes back into play. This secular-sexual religion requires devotion. And the devotion it requires is a sort of a perverted presuppositionalism. And I say this as a fully convinced Christian presuppositionalist. But I think this helps to explain why certain people get a pass. I mean, Gov. Blackface Northam is still the governor of Virginia, right? And Jimmy Blackface Kimmell is still doing late night television, right? And Justin Blackface Trudeau? Still running Canada into the ground? Thought so. But I thought that… 

But that’s where you’re wrong, and thinking is what’s getting you all tangled up. The deal is that this is a cheap knock off religion, but it still requires devotion, sacrifice, and well, faith, which definitely gives it a thick veneer of religiosity. The Woke Religion is still heavily evangelical. You have to believe in the cause. You need to embrace the faith. You need to trust the sacred data. There are of course several altars where you can put your incense. The altar of “abortion rights” is a popular one. It’s bloody and violent. But you can also put a pinch on the altar of LGBT rights. This is where intersectionality comes in, a sort of guide for the perplexed to identify any random priestly genes in your privileged white hiney. Or you could just come out as gay or bisexual or transgender – that’s practically an ordination ceremony. These are the presuppositions. You have to assume, presuppose, actually believe that human freedom is found in orgasms without limitation and victimhood – but not just any victims – victims of Western Christian Culture. And to be more precise, victims of Christ and His Kingdom. If you claim that sacred status, if you have skin in that game, then, from within that faith, from within that religious presupposition, you are “justified” no matter your past black face or fundamentalist sins. 

Encouraging Conclusion
I’m not saying it’s not full of inconsistencies. I’m not saying it’s actually rational. No, it’s neither. But it is a sort of religion. It is a bizarre funhouse mirrored reflection of evangelicalism. Which makes it an indictment of the shallowness of our frat party faith. And it is getting pretty bad. James Coates is still in jail for (checks notes) preaching in his own church. But the religious nature of our opposition also exposes its vulnerability and ultimate impotence. I don’t fear evangelicalism. I don’t fear the youth pastors on unicycles. I do not fear their fog machines and lisping worship leaders. So why would I fear this spray on knock off? In many places it’s the same people. It’s the youth pastors and the feminist preachers that got woke, maybe came out as bisexual, or maybe even denied the faith altogether. Sure, they’ve “upgraded” to a thicker gauge for the holes in their ears. There’s definitely more blood in the abortions they are supporting and voting for now than when they got that sick Hebrew tattoo in college. But it’s all still a bunch of sad posers, fakers, and hypocrites. You can tell because it’s all the same people scurrying around with masks on their faces. This LGBT jihad is more like a lame sorority rush led by some girl who never got picked for the softball team in middle school. So be encouraged, the dry heaves come at the very end. 

But Christ is risen from the dead, and His blood cannot be put back in His veins. It was shed for the forgiveness of sins. This world was purchased with His blood. Abortion and sodomy and genital mutilation and cancel culture can seem to be more potent compared to our Jesus-is-my-boyfriend cartoon churches, but none of those things can take away the sins of the world. Sure, they do more harm in the short term, but they are just as empty, just as flimsy, and they cannot stand before the blood of the Lamb.

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A Meal for Pardoned Traitors

This meal that we share together is the first fruits of the Kingdom. This is our duty and our privilege as citizens of the Kingdom. But this is also the source of what ought to be flowing into the rest of our lives. We sit together around this table in joy, grateful to God for what He has done for us in Christ but also grateful for one another. This is the means that God uses to knit us together into one body, into one family, one nation, one language, one kingdom. The center of it all is right here. 

But hypocrisy is a constant temptation. You eat here at this table with your King. This means that your loyalty is here, and traitors are not tolerated. If you are a subject of King Jesus then you are required to live like one. The fellowship and unity you display to one another here, you are required to show forth wherever you go: in your work, in your families, in your cars, on the phone, on the internet, and in all that you do. You cannot serve two masters. Those who try to do so are traitors to the crown. 

As you well know, Adam and Eve plunged all of us into sin, and therefore we have all been disloyal, we have all been traitors. Therefore, this table is only for forgiven traitors and for those who know they have been disloyal, but have heard the great offer of mercy from the King. What is that offer of mercy? All who believe in Him may come. All who trust in Him are granted a complete pardon. Do you believe? Then come. Your sins are all forgiven. And God promises you blessings and goodness all of your days, a share in the inheritance of the King.

It is only those who persist in their treachery, those who refuse to turn and kiss the Son, it is only those who have to fear. Therefore, as a minister of the Lord Jesus, an ambassador of our Great and Good King, I command you to let go of any sin you are clinging to. Let it go now, and join with us, and rejoice before our King. 

So come and welcome, to Jesus Christ.�

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