Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 4

Assurance of Salvation

Practical Christianity 3

Prayer: Father, these are your saints, your sheep, for whom Christ died. Some of them are troubled with many burdens, and I ask you to use this message to relieve those burdens. Others are not troubled as they ought to be, even though they are causing a lot of trouble in those around them. And Father, I ask you to trouble them now. May this message be used by Your Spirit to wake them up from their Theoden slumbers so they might live. Amen. 

Introduction
In a room with this many people, a preacher always runs the risk of worrying the faithful and flattering the faithless. There are some who have very fragile faith who need to be encouraged, and there are some full of arrogant presumption that really need to be rattled. 

What do I mean? There are some fragile folks who love God and their neighbors, and they can get themselves into a knot because one time in second grade they *might* have said something a little disrespectful to Mrs. Jones and they’re just not sure they’re really saved. 

On the other hand, there are others who are real pills to their families, regularly causing harm and heartbreak, who constantly explain it away as “not perfect just forgiven.” And it would never even occur to them that they might not be saved.

And with a message like this, chances are good that the presumptuous will latch on to the encouragement, and the easily worried will get rattled. So pray that the Spirit would direct the Word to the right targets. When we talk about assurance of salvation, the goal is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.  

The Text: “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whosever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother…” (1 Jn. 3:10-24

Summary of the Text
Fundamentally, everyone in the world is either a child of God or a child of the devil (1 Jn. 3:10). While it is certainly true that God saves sinners, such that a snap shot of Cain and Abel might have caught Cain in what appeared to be a good moment and Abel in a bad moment, nevertheless the game film generally reveals God’s grace working righteousness in believers and sin working evil in unbelievers – this is manifest (1 Jn. 3:10-12). Some of this is proven by the hatred of the world for believers (1 Jn. 3:13). But we know that we have passed from death to life because we love other Christians (1 Jn. 3:14). But bitterness and spite for those around you is a sure sign that you are still in your sins (1 Jn. 3:15). 

This distinction between the children of God and the children of the devil flows directly from the love of God, who laid His life down for us, compelling us to love those around us in word and deed (1 Jn. 3:16-17). This truth is part of how God assures our hearts, even if our hearts sometimes condemn us (1 Jn. 3:18-21). God also gives us assurance by answering our prayers, which He does in part because He is pleased with the obedience which He has given to us (1 Jn. 3:22). But the fundamental obedience is faith in His Son and love that obeys, which proves that we have been given the Holy Spirit (1 Jn. 3:23-24). 

Presumption vs. Faith
Jesus said that there would be some who prophesied in His name, cast out devils and performed wonderful works, to whom He will say, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Mt. 7:22-23). There will be some who went to church, participated in choir and PDGs, homeschooled, and gave tithes, to whom Jesus will say, “I never knew you.” Scripture says that it is possible to be baptized and take communion and still become idolaters and be destroyed (1 Cor. 10:1-11). It says, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). Do not be presumptuous. Likewise, in Romans, it warns Gentile branches in the covenantal olive tree against boasting and presumption: “Be not highminded, but fear: for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee” (Rom. 11:20-21). Unbelieving Jews were cut out of the covenant, and so unbelieving Gentiles may be cut out of the covenant. 

Presumption assumes everything is fine because nothing too bad has happened (yet) but it is always far worse than they think. Faith trembles before God knowing that it deserves destruction. Presumption is arrogant; faith is humble. 

Assurances of Salvation
When Christ saves a sinner, He begins a work that He has already planned, paid for, and guaranteed: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). 

This work begins as a seed that is planted, and the first fruit of that good soil is confessing that Jesus is Lord and calling upon Him: “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12:3). “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (1 Jn. 4:15). Have you called on the name of the Lord? Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Then you are saved. This is part of what makes worship so central. Do you love to gather with all the saints and proclaim Jesus is Lord? Is missing church a bummer or do you hardly notice?

Baptism is also given as a sign of salvation: “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3) Baptism is not so much something that we do as it is something that God does and says: “The like figure [Noah’s Ark] whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 3:21). “How does holy baptism remind and assure you that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross benefits you personally?” The answer is: “In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing and with it promised that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and his Spirit wash away my soul’s impurity, that is, all my sins.” (Heidelberg 69). Do you believe? Communion is meant to be a similar assurance of faith. 

Scripture also teaches that when God begins the work of salvation there is a real change of character: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…” (Gal. 5:19-23). Which one are you? Which list characterizes your life? Good trees bring forth good fruit. 

The presence of the Holy Spirit confirms that we are Christians: “Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit” (1 Jn. 4:13). The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin (Jn. 16:8), gives us the power to repent and obey God’s commandments (1 Jn. 3:24), and leads us to pray and receive what we ask for (Rom. 8:15-16, 1 Jn. 3:22). The Holy Spirit is also the Comforter: so when He convicts us of sin, He shows us sin clearly so we can get rid of quickly. He doesn’t just make us feel vaguely bad. 

Finally, those who have passed from death to life love other Christians (1 Jn. 3:14). “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20) And this includes your children and spouse (Mt. 18:5, 1 Pet. 3:7). Do you love God’s people? Is there a growing desire to be around other Christians (1 Cor. 12:13)? Or are they often annoying and bothersome: believers are the aroma of life to those being saved and the aroma of death to those who are perishing (2 Cor. 2:16)?  

Conclusion
The Christian life is marked by peace and comfort in the Holy Spirit and growing in grace and obedience over time (Rom. 14:17). This is a humble peace, not an arrogant presumption. This is not always a smooth ride, but it is sure and steady progress. What is the pattern in your life?

The Bible teaches that the trajectories are generally manifest. The difference between light and darkness, life and death are not really small. They are open and obvious. Do you love Jesus? Do you love to worship? Do you love the Bible? Do you love forgiveness? Are you baptized? Then you are a Christian. You are saved.

But if you’re looking around wondering what’s for lunch. If you’re bored and slightly annoyed, if you can’t wait to get out of here, if you’re just here because your friends or family are here, there’s a good chance you are not really a Christian and you are not saved. If you’re here in this room in that condition, the invitation is very simple, stop lying, stop pretending, stop blaming others, stop trying to prove yourself. Salvation is all about recognizing that you cannot save yourself, that you are lost, and everything is hopeless in your sin. But Christ was crucified for sinners, not for good people, not for people who have their act together. He came for the sick. He came for the dead. He came for the blind. Do you want to see? If you call on the Lord Jesus, you will be saved. 

Prayer: Father, we have been blessed with tremendous fruit in our community, but we know that it is all your doing, your blessing, your salvation, your Spirit. So do not let us forget this, and so assure us of Your great salvation. And wherever any presumption or hypocrisy has crept in, search it out and expose it. Comfort our hearts with real grace, and trouble the hearts that are hard and full of pride until they fall down in worship. We ask this in Jesus’ name, who taught us to pray…

That Hideous Witchcraft

Introduction
Historically, theonomists have not quite known what to do about drugs. On the one hand, we are massively skeptical of attempts by the state to enforce morality beyond what God has explicitly granted. The state should not be in the health care business because the state sucks at health care. The state’s ministry is primarily one of violence: punishing evil doers, protecting the innocent, and enforcement of private property and equal weights and measures. You don’t want the magistrate taking care of your newborn baby or great-grandma because they will inevitably harm them, but enough about Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

On the other hand, the proliferation of psychedelic drugs, the legalization of marijuana, and the mass destruction of meth and fentanyl all around us seem to be screaming for some measure of criminalization. For many years, I’ve fallen back on a defense of criminalization from a tactical standpoint: it’s unwise to remove the ancient landmarks – the laws have been on the books, we are clearly not in any kind of position to handle this “freedom,” so keep the laws until great maturity breaks out in our land. Hey, we can hope can’t we?

However, I had a high school civics student recently suggest that mind altering drugs (THC, meth, fetanyl, ayahuasca, etc.) ought to be banned by law for their close association with witchcraft, demons, idol worship, and the occult. And I think he’s right. 

Theonomy has often leaned libertarian on drugs because it has assumed that plants and chemicals are just materials. But contra materialistic libertarianism, some materials are used to commune with the dead and demons and therefore should be illegal in Christian nations.  

Of Witches & Familiar Spirits
One element of biblical law that may leave many Christians scratching their heads is what to do with all the passages about witches, wizards, divination (consulting with the dead), and summoning up “familiar spirits.” We can certainly begin by prohibiting public worship of false gods, legally suppressing Islam, Hinduism, etc. While some well-meaning folks have decided that means Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are all inherently immoral (but Moses and Elijah and Jesus were types of wizards), there would seem to be a far more hideous application in hallucinatory, mind altering drugs.  

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22:18).

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer” (Dt. 18:10-11).

“And [Manasseh] caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger” (2 Chron. 33:6).  

Are those ceremonial or moral laws? It would seem very straightforward to see them as moral laws, right there with, no worshipping false gods or passing your children through the fires of Molech. And if they are moral laws then they likely have judicial/criminal applications since in Israel witchcraft and idolatry had potential death penalties tied to them. These are not ceremonial death penalties (ordered directly by God) because they require witnesses and legal due process (e.g. Dt. 13).

While there is certainly a resurgence of occult activity and full blown Satan worship and idolatry in Hinduism and Islam in the West, the gateway into idolatry and witchcraft is not usually a direct leap from a broadly Christian culture to putting fruit in front of statues or communing with demons. And the story of Israel suggests the path: drunken and drugged revelries and orgies. In Exodus 32, when Aaron makes the golden calf, the people offer sacrifices, begin eating and drinking, and Scripture uses a euphemism, “and rose up to play,” which is clearly sexual (cf. Gen. 26:8, 1 Cor. 10:7). This pagan worship is a sort of gluttonous, drunken frenzy. The historical connections between pagan worship, mind altering drugs, drunkenness, and sexual deviancy are well established: temple prostitution, pederasty, peyote, cannabis, opium, etc.

There is no doubt a complex psychology of despair, boredom, lust, and stupidity that leads many people into sexual debauchery and mind-altering drugs. But the search for euphoria through sexual highs or chemical highs (or both) is a deep-seated craving in the human heart, especially in contexts of deep depression, anxiety, fear, and loneliness. 

But the Bible clearly teaches that we are not merely chemical animals, and the world is not merely a chemical junkyard. We are also spiritual creatures made in God’s image, and the world around is far more alive and haunted than we often realize. And there is a deep hatred of God, His image, and His world that drives these cravings and urges, a hatred which loves death and in some perverse way sees power in death (and therefore the powers of death).

Pharmaceutical Witchcraft
Paul teaches this in Galatians 5:20 listing the works of the flesh: “Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies.” There are the close associations of wrath and hatred and strife with idolatry, witchcraft, and heresies. In fact, the word for “witchcraft” is the Greek word “pharmakeia,” from which we get modern words like “pharmaceutical” (related to medical treatments) or “pharmacy,” (a place to buy medicine or drugs). In the ancient world, medicine and drugs were often closely connected to religious rituals, shamans, and “witchdoctors.” But despite the claims of the Enlightenment, we haven’t actually left that world behind. 

In C.S. Lewis’s book That Hideous Strength, he suggests that certain pseudo-scientific meddling with the universe can summon up dark powers and demonic entities. In another children’s story, The Last Battle, a dark deity is summonsed accidentally by lust for power and manipulation. While it may at first seem relatively harmless or merely superstitious, there really are dark powers in the world and the Bible prohibits us from seeking them out for a reason. Pharaoh’s magicians used some real sorcery, and the witch of Endor really did summon up Samuel’s ghost. And when Jesus came into the world the demons and evil spirits were swarming everywhere. 

The repeated commands in the New Testament to be sober and sober-minded are not merely a matter of clear thinking and physical safety (though they are certainly that). 

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Sobriety is particularly necessary because the Devil is looking for victims to devour, and insobriety is apparently one of the ways into human cultures and societies and souls. 

“But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8). Again, sobriety is part of our defensive armor against the “thieves of the darkness and night” (1 Thess. 5:4-5), which is known for drunkenness and sleepy stupors (1 Thess. 5:7). In other words, people putting themselves into drugged stupor are making themselves available and opening themselves up to dark forces and spiritual thieves. 

The irony of course is that initially, the euphoria can feel powerful. It provides chemical highs that feel beautiful, poetic, and can even seem to give dreams and visions of enlightenment and wisdom. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were notable examples of this pseudo-scientific-psychedelic crossover with their Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early 1960s. It’s no accident that Richard Alpert ended up as a Hindu guru renamed Ram Dass, teaching eastern meditation and yoga techniques to the West. 

The witchcraft and wizardry that God prohibits is attempting to manipulate the world, to access power apart from the God who made the world. All sin is a bit of sorcery, attempting to trick blessing out of disobedience: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:23). But if left unchecked, there is a certain hardness of heart that will continue down that dark road until dead spirits are coming out of the ground. And hallucinatory drugs are often involved. And what might begin as mere hallucination may end up more real than we imagine.

Conclusion
The overall point here is simply to point out that the civil magistrate does have a role to play in defending citizens from demons and false gods. This is primarily done through encouraging Christian worship and practice (praising righteousness) and through punishing true criminals. But it cannot be an accident that the kings of Israel and Judah are primarily evaluated on whether they destroyed demon shrines and high places or not. 

The problem with idol worship is not merely that it offends the goodness and glory of the true and living God (though it does). The problem is also the fact that idol worship invites demons and dark forces into a land. And pot shops are some of the high places of modern society. The same thing should be said about abortion. It is not merely mass genocidal murder (it is that), it is also the modern day shrine of Molech, where we pass our children through demon fires. As Megan Basham pointed out one time, while Francis Collins was head of the NIH he, “not only defended experimentation on [babies] obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies.”

You cannot have mass human sacrifice without demons involved. Yes, fallen human beings are desperately wicked, but the sadistic celebration of child sacrifice and the experimentation on aborted baby bodies is the kind of witchcraft Lewis was warning about. The N.I.C.E. hooked up a decapitated human head to a machine and called down demons, and we have been grafting infant scalps onto lab rats. The demons have been summonsed. Tash is not far off. 

And the mass legalization of THC is part of the play. The proliferation of increasingly deviant pornography is part of the play. Anti-depressant drugs are also in the mix. And then comes the meth and fentanyl and LSD and ayahuasca, in the aftermath of the guilt and shame and despair and loneliness and searching for meaning. And the accusers whisper darker and darker lies in their ears. 

We do have witches and wizards and demon shrines that must be destroyed. They are pot shops and abortion clinics and sex-change operating rooms and porn studios, all of which traffic in human flesh, and none of which are limited to human flesh. Theirs is a lust for “strange flesh,” like the men in Sodom seeking to rape the angels, “relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones” (Jude 8-9 ESV).

The law of God prohibits idolatry because idolatry is the worship of demons, and demons are thieves that steal, kill, and destroy, but Christ has come that we and our neighbors might have life. The church and families certainly have significant work to do in this area. Discipleship and discipline in the home and the church contribute enormously to sobriety and fruitfulness in society, but magistrates also play a role in prohibiting public celebration of immorality and demons. While I continue to be highly skeptical of much of the modern “war on drugs” since it appears to have been massively confused about biblical principles of criminal justice (e.g. what is the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” equity for drug trafficking, selling pot, or communing with demons?), I am convinced that magistrates of Christian nations do have some duty to protect the life and livelihoods of their citizens from the ravaging of drug-induced demons.

Photo by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash

Creationism vs. Theistic Evolution

Practical Christianity 2

Prayer: Father, we acknowledge that this is a topic that our enemies have established as a stronghold against us, and it affects us far more than we realize. So we ask that Your Word would be like dynamite this morning, breaking up and breaking through our hard hearts, in Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Introduction
One of the most virulent viruses to infect modern Christianity is Darwinism. On the one hand, many academics have been cool-shamed into compromise, and on the other hand, even many young earth creationists are functional Darwinists. But you cannot build any house on the sand of human whims and hubris. Scientific theories come and go, but the Word of God stands forever. 

And the thing I want to underline here is that human whims and arrogant scientific theories are ultimately cruel and malicious. They are not only false, but they destroy human lives. But the Word of God is the kindness of God. God’s true word is a gracious word. Jesus is the Word of God, and Jesus is truth and grace. And to whatever extent your life is not centered on the Word of God it will have elements of falsehood and cruelty. 

The Text: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light…” (Gen. 1:1-2:3)

Summary of the Text
The whole Bible opens with this record of God’s intentional, personal creation of all that exists from nothing by the power of His word. This is kind of a big deal. The Bible records this work of God as occurring over the course of six ordinary days, marked by “evening and morning” culminating in the seventh day of rest, and all “very good.” There is a clear structure to the work and text, the first three days “forming,” the second three days “filling.” Again, the detail given to us means that it’s important. This is bedrock for Christian living. Those who say that Genesis 1 is not telling us how God created the world, just that He created the world, are lying. There is a lot of how.  

God created light and separated day and night on the first day (Gen. 1:1-5). He separated the waters above and below and created the heaven or sky on the second day (Gen. 1:6-8). He gathered the waters into one place and caused dry ground to appear and the first plants on the third day (Gen. 1:9-13). In this way, God created something like a three-story house: heaven, earth, and sea. And then He began filling the house: On the fourth day, He set the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament as signs and for keeping time and ruling the day and night (Gen. 1:14-18). On day five, God filled the sea with creatures and the sky with winged, flying creatures (Gen. 1:19-23). And God created every land animal on the sixth day and finally man and woman in His image to rule the world (Gen. 1:24-30). And God saw all that He had made and pronounced it very good and rested on the seventh day and blessed it (Gen. 1:31-2:3).

Evidence of History
Some Christians try to avoid the straightforward meaning of this text by arguing that it is symbolic or poetic. But that merely betrays a very modern prejudice against poetry, as though if something is poetic, it’s meaning is unclear or not historical. Which incidentally tells you that this excuse was come up with by men. But men, just try using that on your wife. I don’t recommend it. But the Song at the Sea celebrates the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex. 15) and the Song of Deborah celebrates the defeat of Sisera (Jdg. 5): and those poems are historical. Genesis 1 is poetic, but it is also historical. 

While some like to connive by pointing out that God is outside of time and time is different for God, the Bible repeatedly invites us to believe that God condescended to our ordinary time. A “day” ordinarily means 24 hours, an evening and a morning, and that is exactly what is presented in Genesis 1. The Sabbath command says that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and that is why we work for six days and rest for one day (Ex. 20:11). Likewise, Jesus says that Adam and Eve were created at the “beginning of creation” (Mk. 10:6). To posit millions (or billions) of years of “creation” before Adam and Eve (or the first male and female creatures) contradicts Jesus.  

I’ll just add here that sometimes Christians are troubled by scientists claiming that there is indisputable evidence of the earth existing for millions or billions of years. To which we have three quick answers: first, the Bible actually tells us that God created the world with some apparent age: Adam and Eve were mature adults when they were created, the trees in the garden already had mature fruit on them for Adam and Eve to eat (and the trees probably had rings) and the stars were apparently created millions of light years away with starlight enroute to earth so Adam could see them on his first day; second, the primary measurement of deep time for modern science (radio carbon dating) is notoriously inaccurate and relies on assumptions about the rate of decay that are not always true; and third, the Bible also tells us that there was a world-wide flood that disrupted everything, causing sedimentary layers, canyons, likely massive volcanic eruptions which could easily account for even more appearance of age. 

Theistic Evolution
While there are several different ways Christians sometimes try to dodge Genesis 1, the most common and popular is called “theistic evolution,” or sometimes “evolutionary creation” (a phrase used by one popular group called Biologos, founded by Francis Collins and promoted by prominent theologians like NT Wright and the late Tim Keller). We should simply note here that Francis Collins was the former director of the National Institute of Health and was a major player in promoting Anthony Fauci’s COVID agenda. 

Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation generally accepts Darwin’s model of gradual evolution from pre-existent matter into simple organisms over billions of years all the way down to the present complexity and intelligence of human beings, which really is one of the dumbest things moderns have come to believe. And theistic evolutionists try to salvage the folly by insisting that God actively used and guided the evolutionary process. But making God the author of evolution only makes it worse. 

The problem is that this means God used random mutations (deformities), survival of the fittest (strong destroying the weak), violence, suffering, and death for billions of years to create the present state of the world. This is an entirely different picture, and an entirely different God. Genesis 1 introduces a Good and gracious God who created a good and very good world that Fell into sin. But theistic evolution posits evil from the beginning, and God merely “working with” violence and death and suffering. 

One example of this would be the fact that under Francis Collins, the NIH funded research on aborted babies, including one study that grafted aborted baby skulls unto the lab rats. I mean, if God used violence and death to created “good,” why can’t we? 

But this does deadly damage to central doctrines of the Christian faith: First, the Bible says that creation groans for redemption, having been subject to corruption (Rom. 8:19-22). Creation was created “good” and pronounced “very good,” and it was Adam’s sin that subjected it to corruption. The curse of death infected all of creation: e.g. weeds and thorns. Theistic evolution essentially says that creation has always groaned, has always been cursed, always been subject to corruption, and somehow that was “good.” (But then what does “good” even mean?) This introduces real moral confusion.

Second, the Bible teaches that death did not enter the world until Adam sinned: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). This guts the Fall of any real significance (there had been dying for millennia?). What really changed? Some might say that only Adam and Eve were offered eternal life and they lost that, but who really cares if we got here by death and dying? 

And this brings us to the biggest problem: Third, theistic evolution undermines the point of Christ and His death. Why did Jesus have to die if a sinless man could be evolved from a humanoid ape? Couldn’t God have just re-evolved man for salvation? The Bible teaches that Christ is a “new Adam” come to restore what the first Adam lost (Rom. 5, 1 Cor. 15). He did not merely lose a chance at immortality in the midst of mass mutations and violence. He lost the whole world, and so Christ has come to restore what was lost. Christ has come to save the world, far as the curse is found. To mess with the First Adam is to undermine the work and significance of the Last Adam.  

Political Ramifications 
The Declaration of Independence famously says: “… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” 

You cannot have life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or the kind of limited governments that actually secure those rights, unless you have a Creator who has created men endowed unalienably with those rights. You cannot have that freedom apart from that Creator. And the more muddled you are about that Creator and His creation, the more muddled you will be about those rights and how civil governments secure them. When the doctrine of Creation is considered non-essential, soon your churches, your businesses, and your unalienable rights will also be considered non-essential.

Conclusion
The personal, intentional creation of all things by the Word of God in six days is the foundational expression of God’s kindness, and grace. It is what theologians often call “common grace,” but it is not really common at all. It is exotic and mind-blowing love. The special creation of all things is the foundation of God’s kindness. 

And that it is why it is not merely enough to reject Darwinism as a scientific theory, you must also reject it in every form. And what I mean is the kind of functional Darwinism that imagines that you can trick God’s blessing out of disobedience, that presumptuously lies about the goodness of God’s providence, and no matter what, “God will work it all out for good.” Sometimes this is done in the name of “telling the truth.” People say things like “I’m just being honest.” No, you’re being a jerk. You’re being unkind. This has been weaponized against us by progressive liberals who demand that we lie in the name of kindness, but that doesn’t justify using the truth as a sledgehammer on your wife or husband or kids or the guy on Facebook. 

Sometimes some of the most hardcore creationist families are some of the harshest and ugly in their words. When I was at the Ark Encounter a couple years back, I heard a mother chew out her son outside our hotel right in front of the Ark Encounter. And I will never forget it. The little boy probably was being a pill, but the mother was acting like a Darwinist in that moment, imagining that her harsh and deforming words would somehow create life and order in that young boy’s life. But it never does. You cannot sin with your words and expect it to go well. You will reap what you sow with your words, with your tone of voice, with your heart. God’s word spoke the universe into existence. God’s word upholds it all with supreme kindness. What kind of world are you making with your words? With your text messages? In the car with your kids?

I just did a funeral yesterday for the Bratcher’s daughter who was in a terrible car accident a couple of weeks ago and died unexpectedly from complications this last week. She was almost 42. You don’t know how much time you have here. You don’t know how much time you have with your kids, with your spouse, with your parents. It’s shorter than you think. Darwinists try to fix everything with time, stretching time into distant horizons. And many Christians do the same, thinking they’ll fix the problems later, imagining it will somehow evolve into something better. It won’t. It never does. Sin doesn’t get better. Deal with your bitterness today. Deal with your anger today. Deal with your resentment today. You don’t know if you will have tomorrow or next week. 

It can sometimes seem like too big of a mess, too many years of hurt or pain, too many years of sin, but God created the universe in six days, and He re-created all things in three days in the death and resurrection of His Son. And He paid for all your sins on Good Friday. It may take a few days or weeks to rebuild, but you can get clean in one day. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t let sin fester. If you turn to Him in complete humility and submission, His word to you is grace and truth. If you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, He will lift You up. He will make you a new creation. 

Prayer: Father, wherever we have made peace with evolution, would you please expose it to us, so we can see it? Would you please grant us and our world a complete deliverance from this great curse of madness? And would you please work in our hearts the kindness of Your creative word, Your saving word, so that we might have mercy and kindness and truth for our families and neighbors. Please do this for Jesus’ sake, who taught us to pray…

Practical Christianity 2

Creationism vs. Theistic Evolution

Prayer: Father, we acknowledge that this is a topic that our enemies have established as a stronghold against us, and it affects us far more than we realize. So we ask that Your Word would be like dynamite this morning, breaking up and breaking through our hard hearts, in Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Introduction
One of the most virulent viruses to infect modern Christianity is Darwinism. On the one hand, many academics have been cool-shamed into compromise, and on the other hand, even many young earth creationists are functional Darwinists. But you cannot build any house on the sand of human whims and hubris. Scientific theories come and go, but the Word of God stands forever. 

And the thing I want to underline here is that human whims and arrogant scientific theories are ultimately cruel and malicious. They are not only false, but they destroy human lives. But the Word of God is the kindness of God. God’s true word is a gracious word. Jesus is the Word of God, and Jesus is truth and grace. And to whatever extent your life is not centered on the Word of God it will have elements of falsehood and cruelty. 

The Text: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light…” (Gen. 1:1-2:3)

Summary of the Text
The whole Bible opens with this record of God’s intentional, personal creation of all that exists from nothing by the power of His word. This is kind of a big deal. The Bible records this work of God as occurring over the course of six ordinary days, marked by “evening and morning” culminating in the seventh day of rest, and all “very good.” There is a clear structure to the work and text, the first three days “forming,” the second three days “filling.” Again, the detail given to us means that it’s important. This is bedrock for Christian living. Those who say that Genesis 1 is not telling us how God created the world, just that He created the world, are lying. There is a lot of how.  

God created light and separated day and night on the first day (Gen. 1:1-5). He separated the waters above and below and created the heaven or sky on the second day (Gen. 1:6-8). He gathered the waters into one place and caused dry ground to appear and the first plants on the third day (Gen. 1:9-13). In this way, God created something like a three-story house: heaven, earth, and sea. And then He began filling the house: On the fourth day, He set the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament as signs and for keeping time and ruling the day and night (Gen. 1:14-18). On day five, God filled the sea with creatures and the sky with winged, flying creatures (Gen. 1:19-23). And God created every land animal on the sixth day and finally man and woman in His image to rule the world (Gen. 1:24-30). And God saw all that He had made and pronounced it very good and rested on the seventh day and blessed it (Gen. 1:31-2:3).

Evidence of History
Some Christians try to avoid the straightforward meaning of this text by arguing that it is symbolic or poetic. But that merely betrays a very modern prejudice against poetry, as though if something is poetic, it’s meaning is unclear or not historical. Which incidentally tells you that this excuse was come up with by men. But men, just try using that on your wife. I don’t recommend it. But the Song at the Sea celebrates the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex. 15) and the Song of Deborah celebrates the defeat of Sisera (Jdg. 5): and those poems are historical. Genesis 1 is poetic, but it is also historical. 

While some like to connive by pointing out that God is outside of time and time is different for God, the Bible repeatedly invites us to believe that God condescended to our ordinary time. A “day” ordinarily means 24 hours, an evening and a morning, and that is exactly what is presented in Genesis 1. The Sabbath command says that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and that is why we work for six days and rest for one day (Ex. 20:11). Likewise, Jesus says that Adam and Eve were created at the “beginning of creation” (Mk. 10:6). To posit millions (or billions) of years of “creation” before Adam and Eve (or the first male and female creatures) contradicts Jesus.  

I’ll just add here that sometimes Christians are troubled by scientists claiming that there is indisputable evidence of the earth existing for millions or billions of years. To which we have three quick answers: first, the Bible actually tells us that God created the world with some apparent age: Adam and Eve were mature adults when they were created, the trees in the garden already had mature fruit on them for Adam and Eve to eat (and the trees probably had rings) and the stars were apparently created millions of light years away with starlight enroute to earth so Adam could see them on his first day; second, the primary measurement of deep time for modern science (radio carbon dating) is notoriously inaccurate and relies on assumptions about the rate of decay that are not always true; and third, the Bible also tells us that there was a world-wide flood that disrupted everything, causing sedimentary layers, canyons, likely massive volcanic eruptions which could easily account for even more appearance of age. 

Theistic Evolution
While there are several different ways Christians sometimes try to dodge Genesis 1, the most common and popular is called “theistic evolution,” or sometimes “evolutionary creation” (a phrase used by one popular group called Biologos, founded by Francis Collins and promoted by prominent theologians like NT Wright and the late Tim Keller). We should simply note here that Francis Collins was the former director of the National Institute of Health and was a major player in promoting Anthony Fauci’s COVID agenda. 

Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation generally accepts Darwin’s model of gradual evolution from pre-existent matter into simple organisms over billions of years all the way down to the present complexity and intelligence of human beings, which really is one of the dumbest things moderns have come to believe. And theistic evolutionists try to salvage the folly by insisting that God actively used and guided the evolutionary process. But making God the author of evolution only makes it worse. 

The problem is that this means God used random mutations (deformities), survival of the fittest (strong destroying the weak), violence, suffering, and death for billions of years to create the present state of the world. This is an entirely different picture, and an entirely different God. Genesis 1 introduces a Good and gracious God who created a good and very good world that Fell into sin. But theistic evolution posits evil from the beginning, and God merely “working with” violence and death and suffering. 

One example of this would be the fact that under Francis Collins, the NIH funded research on aborted babies, including one study that grafted aborted baby skulls unto the lab rats. I mean, if God used violence and death to created “good,” why can’t we? 

But this does deadly damage to central doctrines of the Christian faith: First, the Bible says that creation groans for redemption, having been subject to corruption (Rom. 8:19-22). Creation was created “good” and pronounced “very good,” and it was Adam’s sin that subjected it to corruption. The curse of death infected all of creation: e.g. weeds and thorns. Theistic evolution essentially says that creation has always groaned, has always been cursed, always been subject to corruption, and somehow that was “good.” (But then what does “good” even mean?) This introduces real moral confusion.

Second, the Bible teaches that death did not enter the world until Adam sinned: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). This guts the Fall of any real significance (there had been dying for millennia?). What really changed? Some might say that only Adam and Eve were offered eternal life and they lost that, but who really cares if we got here by death and dying? 

And this brings us to the biggest problem: Third, theistic evolution undermines the point of Christ and His death. Why did Jesus have to die if a sinless man could be evolved from a humanoid ape? Couldn’t God have just re-evolved man for salvation? The Bible teaches that Christ is a “new Adam” come to restore what the first Adam lost (Rom. 5, 1 Cor. 15). He did not merely lose a chance at immortality in the midst of mass mutations and violence. He lost the whole world, and so Christ has come to restore what was lost. Christ has come to save the world, far as the curse is found. To mess with the First Adam is to undermine the work and significance of the Last Adam.  

Political Ramifications 
The Declaration of Independence famously says: “… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” 

You cannot have life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or the kind of limited governments that actually secure those rights, unless you have a Creator who has created men endowed unalienably with those rights. You cannot have that freedom apart from that Creator. And the more muddled you are about that Creator and His creation, the more muddled you will be about those rights and how civil governments secure them. When the doctrine of Creation is considered non-essential, soon your churches, your businesses, and your unalienable rights will also be considered non-essential.

Conclusion
The personal, intentional creation of all things by the Word of God in six days is the foundational expression of God’s kindness, and grace. It is what theologians often call “common grace,” but it is not really common at all. It is exotic and mind-blowing love. The special creation of all things is the foundation of God’s kindness. 

And that it is why it is not merely enough to reject Darwinism as a scientific theory, you must also reject it in every form. And what I mean is the kind of functional Darwinism that imagines that you can trick God’s blessing out of disobedience, that presumptuously lies about the goodness of God’s providence, and no matter what, “God will work it all out for good.” Sometimes this is done in the name of “telling the truth.” People say things like “I’m just being honest.” No, you’re being a jerk. You’re being unkind. This has been weaponized against us by progressive liberals who demand that we lie in the name of kindness, but that doesn’t justify using the truth as a sledgehammer on your wife or husband or kids or the guy on Facebook. 

Sometimes some of the most hardcore creationist families are some of the harshest and ugly in their words. When I was at the Ark Encounter a couple years back, I heard a mother chew out her son outside our hotel right in front of the Ark Encounter. And I will never forget it. The little boy probably was being a pill, but the mother was acting like a Darwinist in that moment, imagining that her harsh and deforming words would somehow create life and order in that young boy’s life. But it never does. You cannot sin with your words and expect it to go well. You will reap what you sow with your words, with your tone of voice, with your heart. God’s word spoke the universe into existence. God’s word upholds it all with supreme kindness. What kind of world are you making with your words? With your text messages? In the car with your kids?

I just did a funeral yesterday for the Bratcher’s daughter who was in a terrible car accident a couple of weeks ago and died unexpectedly from complications this last week. She was almost 42. You don’t know how much time you have here. You don’t know how much time you have with your kids, with your spouse, with your parents. It’s shorter than you think. Darwinists try to fix everything with time, stretching time into distant horizons. And many Christians do the same, thinking they’ll fix the problems later, imagining it will somehow evolve into something better. It won’t. It never does. Sin doesn’t get better. Deal with your bitterness today. Deal with your anger today. Deal with your resentment today. You don’t know if you will have tomorrow or next week. 

It can sometimes seem like too big of a mess, too many years of hurt or pain, too many years of sin, but God created the universe in six days, and He re-created all things in three days in the death and resurrection of His Son. And He paid for all your sins on Good Friday. It may take a few days or weeks to rebuild, but you can get clean in one day. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t let sin fester. If you turn to Him in complete humility and submission, His word to you is grace and truth. If you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, He will lift You up. He will make you a new creation. 

Prayer: Father, wherever we have made peace with evolution, would you please expose it to us, so we can see it? Would you please grant us and our world a complete deliverance from this great curse of madness? And would you please work in our hearts the kindness of Your creative word, Your saving word, so that we might have mercy and kindness and truth for our families and neighbors. Please do this for Jesus’ sake, who taught us to pray…

Julie Chandler R.I.P.

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one… I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (Jn. 10:10-11, 27-30, 11:25-26).

The Bible clearly teaches that death is an enemy: “For [Christ] must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:25-26). But in the same passage it says that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power and sting of death have been taken away, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:52-56).

So Scripture teaches that after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven He began to reign and He began putting all of His enemies beneath His feet, like a conquering King. And the last enemy that He will put down is death itself, and that will be put down at the final resurrection when the dead are raised incorruptible, when our corruptible bodies are transformed into immortal bodies, and then will finally be fulfilled what Isaiah the prophet foretold: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Is. 25:8). Paul is also quoting from the prophet Hosea who promised, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction” (Hos. 13:14). 

So outside of Christ, death is a terrible enemy, and the Bible says that it is the particular weapon of the Devil. This is why Jesus died: “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:14-15). So the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But when Jesus Christ died on the Cross, He suffered the sting of death in our place, and He perfectly fulfilled the law’s demands. In the Cross, justice for our sins was fulfilled. And this is why Jesus said, “It is finished.” Justice was completed. In Romans 6 it says that he wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In other words, the Devil has the power of death only so long as justice demands our death. But when our sins have been paid for, the sting of death is removed. 

In Revelation 1, when John met the risen Christ, Jesus said, “Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1:17-18). When Jesus died and rose from the dead, He became the Lord of the living and the dead. He conquered sin and death and the Devil, and He took the keys to death away from the Devil. In Ephesians it says that when Jesus ascended He took captivity captive. That included the captivity of death, the bondage of death. Jesus is the destruction of the grave. He tore a hole in Hades and began the great conquest of death for all who believe.

This is how Jesus is the Good Shepherd. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came that we might have life, unending and abundant. And He secured this by giving His life for His sheep. But Jesus adds two additional claims to assure us of our security and comfort in life and in death. He says that God the Father has given all of His sheep to Him, and His Father is greater than all. The thief cannot touch any of the sheep because the Father has given them to Jesus, and the Father is greater than all – greater than death, greater than the devil, greater than any thief. Secondly, Jesus says that no one is able to pluck them out of His hand. He actually says this with regard to the Father’s hand, and then He says it again with regard to His own hand. No one can pluck the sheep from the Father’s hand or from Christ’s hand. And you might naturally wonder, well, which hand is it, whose hand are we in? And Jesus answers that question very clearly: “I and my Father are one.” 

If Jesus is merely a great teacher or a good man who became a god or like God, He may be very inspiring, but He cannot guarantee what He promises. He cannot guarantee our safety and security even through death itself. But if Jesus is one with the Father, then He is the Good Shepherd, and we know that we have been made right with the Father. Because they are one, they have one hand, and we are safe in His hand. We know our sins are forgiven. And we know that just as the Father raised Jesus from the dead, so too, He will raise Julie and all those who trust in Christ, and “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces.”

Julie was a Christian woman who trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ. She was claimed by God before the foundation of the world, and she was purchased by Her Savior at Calvary, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. She was baptized and professed her faith in the Lord Jesus; she heard His voice. This means that He was her Good Shepherd. He held her firm in His grip all her days, and He brought her home to Himself in His great goodness and love. Death has not won. And death had no sting for her because Christ had paid for all her sins with His precious blood, and by that same blood she has been ushered into the very presence of the Father and she is guaranteed resurrection and eternal life.

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

Photo by Yoksel Zok on Unsplash

Cyrus & Ava

In John 2, Jesus attended a wedding that ran out of wine. His mother famously brought the problem to Jesus. And He asked, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour is not yet come.” And Mary simply told the servants to do whatever Jesus told them. So Jesus saw six large stone water jars nearby, kept for Jewish purification rites. They held 20-30 gallons a piece, that’s 120-180 gallons total, and Jesus told them to draw some out and take it to the master of the feast. This means that Jesus made the equivalent of between 600-900 bottles of wine, which, if you were wondering, is 50-75 cases of wine.

The bridegroom was apparently the one entrusted with providing the wine, and it may have been a source of significant embarrassment or shame for him to run out of wine right in the middle of the celebration. But when the miracle is performed, the embarrassed bridegroom is given the credit for not only providing wine, but providing the best wine, saving the best for last. And the gospel says that this was the first miracle and sign that Jesus performed to manifest His glory, and His disciples believed in Him. 

This story is no accident at all. It is the first sign because it reverses the first sin. In a garden 6,000 years ago, the first bridegroom failed, and he failed like the bridegroom in this story with regard to food and feasting. God provided a feast in the Garden, even the Tree of Life, from which God said they were welcome to eat of every tree, just not the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But Adam the Bridegroom failed to protect his bride and sinned, and their eyes were opened to their guilt and they became ashamed. And God pronounced curses upon them and ushered them out of the garden, away from the feast. Now they would work a cursed ground, with thorns and weeds, and the food and feasting would only come by great trial and toil. 

This great toil was pictured by the ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant. After the Fall, everything was dead and decaying, everything was unclean and impure, tainted with sin and shame. Anyone who has lived long in this world knows about this. But God in His mercy still came near to His people, but He required them to constantly wash themselves and wash everything around them. God wanted them to constantly acknowledge that they need Him to cleanse them. And Hebrews calls all these washings “baptisms.” They had to be baptized over and over, sprinkled with purification water again and again because they were always getting unclean again. It was never enough.  

Until God sent a new Adam, a new Bridegroom to make the world new. Unlike the first Adam, Jesus did not listen to the serpent. He did not seize food or glory or power. He waited patiently for it to be given. And here at the very beginning of His ministry, He demonstrated why He had come. He came to bring the feast. Or better, He came to bring us back to the feast, back into the garden. But He provides what we cannot provide. And He even alludes to this when His mother tells him they have run out of wine. He says, “Woman, my hour is not yet come.”

It’s worth noting that in the Garden, the woman’s name is “woman.” Her name is not Eve until after the Fall, and after the promise is given that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. He names his wife Eve in faith believing that she will become the mother of all the living. So you kind of have to wonder if Jesus said this line with a grin and a twinkle in His eye, calling His mother “woman,” and I wonder if His mother smiled back as she told the servants “just do whatever He says.” 

Later, Jesus will refer to “His hour” as the time of His death on the cross. He knows that His death is the real moment when He will provide for all our needs and cover all our shame and welcome us back to the feast with the very best wine of all. But He pictures that coming hour in that quiet wedding in Galilee, perhaps in someone’s backyard, who suddenly had a lot more wine than they probably knew what to do with. And His disciples saw it all and they believed. 

So this really is a glorious sign of the gospel. Jesus comes as the new Adam, the new Bridegroom to supply what the first bridegroom and all other bridegrooms have always struggled to supply: life and joy. But in this sign, Jesus proclaims that He can supply what we cannot. But more than that, Jesus provides what we cannot provide, and then He lets us get the credit for it. He covers our shame. Of course, we should always want to point away to Him as the One who makes it all possible. But this is how Jesus loves to do it for all who believe in Him. 

Cyrus, today you are the bridegroom, and from this day forward, you are called by God to bring life and joy to your wife and family. You are to do this by imitating Jesus. Ephesians says you do this by leading your wife and loving her. And when you do this faithfully, it will require you to lay your life down for her in obedience to God. And this will be exceedingly hard. But this is the wine you are called by God to supply for the feast, and sometimes you will run out. So the only way to keep the feast going is for you to constantly look to Christ, telling Him that you have run out, and He will always provide more. All of this requires great strength and joy: strength and joy for the many burdens and trials of life, but also strength and joy to ask Christ for more. But He died on the Cross and rose from the dead to provide that strength for every man who asks. Jesus gives His blood for wine so that He might live in You, and His life makes you strong for this. And your glory is this strong joy.

Ava, today you are the bride, and from this day forward, you are called to help your husband as he seeks to lead you and your family in obedience to God. In Song of Songs, wine is a central theme in celebrating marital love. As Cyrus loves you, you are called to return that love with joy, and hospitality, and children. He brings the wine of joyful sacrifice, and you return it to him with the wine of respect and obedience and submission. We live in a world that is utterly embarrassed of a woman’s obedience to her husband, but we call it glory because Ephesians says you are imitating the glory of the Christian Church, which submits to Christ in all things. At the same time, your task will not be easy because you are promising to obey a fallible man. And you will be tempted to resent his weaknesses and failures. Sometimes you will run out of the wine of respect and obedience, and so the charge is the same for you: look to Christ for the wine that you need to supply. Tell Him when you have run out, and He will always supply you with more. He died and rose again so that every woman might have the strength she needs to submit to her own husband in the Lord. Jesus gives His blood for wine so that He might live in You, and His life makes you strong for this. And your glory is this submission and respect.

In this way, as Cyrus pictures Christ in his leadership and love and you respond like the Church in joyful obedience, together you are spreading a feast, and Christ will always supply the wine, the next vintage always better than the last.

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

Photo by Luigi Pozzoli on Unsplash

Chestertonian Gospel

Practical Christianity 1

Prayer: Father, please open our eyes to Your glory this morning. We know that compared to your glory, our eyes can barely see. So please give us Your Spirit so that we would see Your glory in this Word and then illumine everything around us by this Word. Please do this for the glory of Christ, and because we ask in His name, Amen.

Introduction
Today we’re beginning a series on Practical Christianity. We will be covering topics like what does the Bible say about Heaven & Hell, Divorce & Remarriage, Baptism, as well as Prayer and Family Worship. A lot of these topics will be practical in the sense that they will tackle Christian practice, but they will also be practical in the sense that they will be applicable to every Christian, topics every Christian should have a working knowledge of. This first message is on the potence of a what we might call a Chestertonian Gospel. And this really is the cornerstone of all practical Christianity. This is how the gospel begins to impact everything.

G.K. Chesterton was a Roman Catholic who famously saw the beauty and extravagance and personalism of God’s world. Life is an epic adventure, an extravagant stage, an outrageously stunning canvas of God’s glory. As Chesterton once put it, “One elephant having a trunk was odd, but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.” 

Chesterton pointed out the glory in what many only consider ordinary, and in particular the glory of repetition: “The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”

Unfortunately, Chesterton believed that Calvinism was a plot to bury all that glory in a pile of fatalism (He knows better now). But the Bible teaches that the doctrines of grace (Calvinism) recovered in the Reformation go hand in hand with this exuberance. Sovereign grace brings the glory into sharp relief. 

Robert Capon put it this way, “The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale, neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

Summary of the Text
Scripture tells the story of our salvation like a grand adventure. We are all like lost orphan children, trapped and imprisoned in the great dungeon of sin and death (Gal. 4:3). And just when all hope seemed lost, God sent His Son, born of Eve just like us yet without sin, made under the law just like us, yet no law breaker, to lead the great prison break, and bring us home to His Father – not only to bring us home but to be adopted as sons (Gal. 4:4-5). Not only have we been adopted, but God has given us the very same Spirit that fills His Son, teaching us to call Him “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). This means that we are no mere servants but true and full sons, and royal sons, with a full inheritance at that (Gal. 4:7). Do you live like this is true? Do you make breakfast as a redeemed-slave-made-nobility? Do you clean your room and computer program like the son of the High King?

Rags to Riches
Imagine that one of your ancestors was adopted by a Great King, but through pride and greed was tricked by an enemy and betrayed the King and was disinherited, banished from the Kingdom, and all his descendants were sentenced to work as slaves ever since. But one day a letter arrives at your slave hut, and it is an official legal document, a will and testimony with a deed to a castle. But it isn’t just any castle, it’s the castle of the King your ancestor betrayed, and the will restores all that was lost, making you a lord in the kingdom, and it is signed and sealed in the blood of the Great King’s Son with the words “Debt Paid In Full.” 

That is what the gospel is. The gospel is the “good news” that what we thought we had lost forever, what we thought was impossible, has been found and completely restored – the gift of living forever as God’s favored nobility. Do you look at the world around you as the entry way of eternal life? We almost lost everything – apart from Christ, all is lost – but in Christ everything is restored, everything is grace and gift. Every day is Christmas. And obedience is the gift of serving the King. Disobedience is ingratitude; obedience is life. 

Double Imputation
Theologians call the legal transaction that saved us “double imputation.” The gospel is that what is rightfully ours (sin, guilt, and judgment) inherited from Adam has been reckoned to Jesus Christ on His cross, and what was rightfully His (righteousness, holiness, and the inheritance of God), since He was completely sinless and obedient – that has been reckoned to us by faith alone. “For He [God] hath made Him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him [Christ]” (2 Cor. 5:21). “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). This double imputation is only possible because Christ came as a new Adam, a new covenantal head. So just as by Adam’s sin, we all inherited sin and death, so by Christ’s righteousness, all who trust in Him inherit His righteousness and life (Rom. 5). 

But do you hear this and does it pierce your heart? Does it make you sing? You were on death row, and the King You betrayed traded places with you. Every bite of food, every breath you take – it’s all grace, it’s all mercy, all undeserved gift, which makes every detail shine: it’s all treasure: your house, your car, your body, your food, your yard, every blade of grass, every rock or pebble – it could have not been. You could have not been, and you could be under the curse of sin and death. It might have all been lost. But in Christ you are free and alive, and that makes everything a gift, everything glorious, everything treasure. 

Before the Foundation of the World
But there is one more significant piece that really makes a big difference. The Bible teaches that all of this was planned before the foundation of the world: “according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world… having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ… That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ… in Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will: that we should be to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:4-6, 10-12). 

“Sovereign grace” is God’s eternal plot to save. This underlines the glory. Every detail was planned by God. Every detail is His artistry. Your childhood, your family, the people, all the side characters, all the plot development. It was all written for your salvation, that we should be to the praise of His glory. 
 
Conclusions
Chesterton thought that this doctrine of predestination (Calvinism) was a terrible thing because he thought it turned God into a monstrous puppeteer and destroyed the beauty and excitement of Christian life. But Scripture says just the opposite. God’s absolute sovereign grace underlines two things about our salvation: It was utterly impossible for us, and it is all His mercy (Eph. 2:5-9). We were dead, and God made us alive. That is the beginning of the most epic adventure prepared for us. 

If God were not absolute goodness and beauty and life, we might grant that His absolute sovereignty could be a downer. But if the most brilliant, creative, and perfectly gracious and personal Author is telling the story, how could the story be anything less than wonderful? We are His characters. This world is His canvas, His symphony. This story is His surprise party. Open your eyes. Nothing is ordinary. We live in a magical world of sunsets and glaciers; grapes that turn into wine; mountains that explode and rise out of the sea; and oceans that foam and churn; wind and rain and snow; and the menagerie of colorful creatures flying, leaping, spinning, croaking. And we have been forgiven and crowned as kings and queens, inheriting it all. 

All our doubts come down to one central fear: but what if God isn’t good? And the answer to that is: He sent His Son for you. He sent His Son to make us His sons. Open your eyes. Look at the grace all around you. Look at the glory. Open your mouth: taste and see that He is good. 

Prayer: Father, please do not let us to become religious curators of a theological museum. Do not allow Your gospel to become mundane or ordinary. Please keep the wonder and the glory of Your grace fresh in our hearts all our days, so that our neighbors might know Your glory, so that our children and grandchildren will be even more amazed than we are, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, who taught us to pray…

Practical Christianity 1

Chestertonian Gospel

Prayer: Father, please open our eyes to Your glory this morning. We know that compared to your glory, our eyes can barely see. So please give us Your Spirit so that we would see Your glory in this Word and then illumine everything around us by this Word. Please do this for the glory of Christ, and because we ask in His name, Amen.

Introduction
Today we’re beginning a series on Practical Christianity. We will be covering topics like what does the Bible say about Heaven & Hell, Divorce & Remarriage, Baptism, as well as Prayer and Family Worship. A lot of these topics will be practical in the sense that they will tackle Christian practice, but they will also be practical in the sense that they will be applicable to every Christian, topics every Christian should have a working knowledge of. This first message is on the potence of a what we might call a Chestertonian Gospel. And this really is the cornerstone of all practical Christianity. This is how the gospel begins to impact everything.

G.K. Chesterton was a Roman Catholic who famously saw the beauty and extravagance and personalism of God’s world. Life is an epic adventure, an extravagant stage, an outrageously stunning canvas of God’s glory. As Chesterton once put it, “One elephant having a trunk was odd, but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.” 

Chesterton pointed out the glory in what many only consider ordinary, and in particular the glory of repetition: “The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.”

Unfortunately, Chesterton believed that Calvinism was a plot to bury all that glory in a pile of fatalism (He knows better now). But the Bible teaches that the doctrines of grace (Calvinism) recovered in the Reformation go hand in hand with this exuberance. Sovereign grace brings the glory into sharp relief. 

Robert Capon put it this way, “The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale, neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

Summary of the Text
Scripture tells the story of our salvation like a grand adventure. We are all like lost orphan children, trapped and imprisoned in the great dungeon of sin and death (Gal. 4:3). And just when all hope seemed lost, God sent His Son, born of Eve just like us yet without sin, made under the law just like us, yet no law breaker, to lead the great prison break, and bring us home to His Father – not only to bring us home but to be adopted as sons (Gal. 4:4-5). Not only have we been adopted, but God has given us the very same Spirit that fills His Son, teaching us to call Him “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). This means that we are no mere servants but true and full sons, and royal sons, with a full inheritance at that (Gal. 4:7). Do you live like this is true? Do you make breakfast as a redeemed-slave-made-nobility? Do you clean your room and computer program like the son of the High King?

Rags to Riches
Imagine that one of your ancestors was adopted by a Great King, but through pride and greed was tricked by an enemy and betrayed the King and was disinherited, banished from the Kingdom, and all his descendants were sentenced to work as slaves ever since. But one day a letter arrives at your slave hut, and it is an official legal document, a will and testimony with a deed to a castle. But it isn’t just any castle, it’s the castle of the King your ancestor betrayed, and the will restores all that was lost, making you a lord in the kingdom, and it is signed and sealed in the blood of the Great King’s Son with the words “Debt Paid In Full.” 

That is what the gospel is. The gospel is the “good news” that what we thought we had lost forever, what we thought was impossible, has been found and completely restored – the gift of living forever as God’s favored nobility. Do you look at the world around you as the entry way of eternal life? We almost lost everything – apart from Christ, all is lost – but in Christ everything is restored, everything is grace and gift. Every day is Christmas. And obedience is the gift of serving the King. Disobedience is ingratitude; obedience is life. 

Double Imputation
Theologians call the legal transaction that saved us “double imputation.” The gospel is that what is rightfully ours (sin, guilt, and judgment) inherited from Adam has been reckoned to Jesus Christ on His cross, and what was rightfully His (righteousness, holiness, and the inheritance of God), since He was completely sinless and obedient – that has been reckoned to us by faith alone. “For He [God] hath made Him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him [Christ]” (2 Cor. 5:21). “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). This double imputation is only possible because Christ came as a new Adam, a new covenantal head. So just as by Adam’s sin, we all inherited sin and death, so by Christ’s righteousness, all who trust in Him inherit His righteousness and life (Rom. 5). 

But do you hear this and does it pierce your heart? Does it make you sing? You were on death row, and the King You betrayed traded places with you. Every bite of food, every breath you take – it’s all grace, it’s all mercy, all undeserved gift, which makes every detail shine: it’s all treasure: your house, your car, your body, your food, your yard, every blade of grass, every rock or pebble – it could have not been. You could have not been, and you could be under the curse of sin and death. It might have all been lost. But in Christ you are free and alive, and that makes everything a gift, everything glorious, everything treasure. 

Before the Foundation of the World
But there is one more significant piece that really makes a big difference. The Bible teaches that all of this was planned before the foundation of the world: “according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world… having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ… That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ… in Whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will: that we should be to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:4-6, 10-12). 

“Sovereign grace” is God’s eternal plot to save. This underlines the glory. Every detail was planned by God. Every detail is His artistry. Your childhood, your family, the people, all the side characters, all the plot development. It was all written for your salvation, that we should be to the praise of His glory. 
 
Conclusions
Chesterton thought that this doctrine of predestination (Calvinism) was a terrible thing because he thought it turned God into a monstrous puppeteer and destroyed the beauty and excitement of Christian life. But Scripture says just the opposite. God’s absolute sovereign grace underlines two things about our salvation: It was utterly impossible for us, and it is all His mercy (Eph. 2:5-9). We were dead, and God made us alive. That is the beginning of the most epic adventure prepared for us. 

If God were not absolute goodness and beauty and life, we might grant that His absolute sovereignty could be a downer. But if the most brilliant, creative, and perfectly gracious and personal Author is telling the story, how could the story be anything less than wonderful? We are His characters. This world is His canvas, His symphony. This story is His surprise party. Open your eyes. Nothing is ordinary. We live in a magical world of sunsets and glaciers; grapes that turn into wine; mountains that explode and rise out of the sea; and oceans that foam and churn; wind and rain and snow; and the menagerie of colorful creatures flying, leaping, spinning, croaking. And we have been forgiven and crowned as kings and queens, inheriting it all. 

All our doubts come down to one central fear: but what if God isn’t good? And the answer to that is: He sent His Son for you. He sent His Son to make us His sons. Open your eyes. Look at the grace all around you. Look at the glory. Open your mouth: taste and see that He is good. 

Prayer: Father, please do not let us to become religious curators of a theological museum. Do not allow Your gospel to become mundane or ordinary. Please keep the wonder and the glory of Your grace fresh in our hearts all our days, so that our neighbors might know Your glory, so that our children and grandchildren will be even more amazed than we are, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, who taught us to pray…

The Theistic Evolution Virus

[I did an online debate with “Redeemed Zoomer” recently and below is a slightly revised version of my opening statement.]

Introduction 
While I do believe that Theistic Evolution is not compatible with biblical Christianity, I do want to say at the outset that I don’t believe that this means no one who holds to Theistic Evolution can be saved. I believe there have been many sincere Christians who have erroneously believed that God used macro evolution to create everything that has come into existence, and many of them are in Heaven now and they know better. 

At the same time, by saying that theistic evolution is not compatible with biblical Christianity is to say that it is inconsistent with Scripture and reason and therefore ultimately unhelpful, antagonist, and long-term utterly cancerous and destructive to the Christian faith, and yes, I’m talking about Francis Collins.

Defining Terms
I want to define my terms a little further before proceeding. I’m here arguing against theistic macro evolution, that is, the idea that God in some way Providentially super-intended “the addition of new or novel traits (neomorphs) within a population when the ancestors neither had those traits nor the genetic information to code for them.” Here, I’m quoting Dr. Gordon Wilson’s definition and I will be drawing heavily from his work on the scientific side of things going forward and throughout this debate. I highly commend his book Darwin’s Sandcastle to everyone.

No one denies the reality of micro evolution, what Wilson describes as “the rearrangement, redistribution, removal, or remodeling of existing genetic information” in various “kinds” of creatures. This was designed by God the Creator to allow for families and kinds of creatures to adapt to different environments, which can certainly include a very wide variety of physical traits (e.g. compare the Russell terrier to a Bernese Mountain dog). But no true “neomorph” has come into existence in that great variation. Size, shape, colors, hair length and numerous other details shift and change, but no dog has ever yet grown feathers or a turtle shell or sprouted a trunk. And despite Darwin’s great hope in the fossil record, nothing has turned up. And that is because his theory is illogical and utterly impossible and flatly contradicts the text of Genesis and Scripture as a whole. 

The Theological & Scriptural Case
So let’s begin with Scripture: Theistic evolution posits that God used the “natural” process of natural selection, mutation, adaptation, and billions of years of suffering, violence, death, and destruction to bring about the current state of the world. But it does not make it better to say that “God used” violence and death to create the world. It does not make it better; it makes it worse. Some might point to the Biblical doctrine of Providence that God works all things together for good, including evil to try to justify theistic evolution, or what Joseph told his brothers: what evil men meant for evil God meant for good. 

But if Genesis 1 is a poetic description of the evolutionary process, what does “good” even mean? If the fifth day describes millions of years of mutation, suffering, violence, and death of sea creatures and birds, and God saw all of that and said it was good – what does “good” even mean? This introduces massive moral confusion into the text. This point is underlined on the seventh day and the final appraisal of all of creation: And God saw all that He had made and behold it was “very good.” The whole point is that there is no evil in the world. But if God is evaluating millions or billions of years of mutation, suffering, violence, extinction, and death, that introduces a radical category confusion of goodness to the Bible. 

When God providentially works His good purposes out of contrary evil purposes later in history, He as at war with those evil purposes. But theistic evolution blesses them. Theistic evolution must say that the fact of the strong preying on the weak is “good.” But the Bible teaches that death is an enemy, an enemy to be destroyed, and a very crucial point is that it is an enemy that Jesus conquered in His death and resurrection. God is at war with death. 

The biblical doctrine of supernatural creation insists on a base line of goodness and perfection. And in that first week of the universe, death and suffering and violence were not present, but that also means they were not at all natural. It is utterly abhorrent to call violence, suffering, mutation, and death “natural.” The whole point of the curse of sin and death is that it is a curse. It is unnatural. It is not the way it’s supposed to be. To call millions or billions of years of predation, suffering, and extinction “natural” is to make the Fall normal. It has become what seems natural and normal to fallen men, but as Romans 8 says, all of creation has been subjected to futility, not willingly, and it groans in eager expectation to be delivered from the bondage of corruption – from the curse of sin and death. If you try to press that groaning back into the billions of imaginary years prior to the existence of Adam, when did it begin to groan? When was it subjected to bondage? Theistic evolution in effect says that that world has always been cursed, always groaning. And somehow the curse is good. But if that is the case, then why did Jesus have to die? He didn’t have to die. God could have just used more theistic evolution to “evolve” our fallen natures into unfallen ones. If He can use natural processes to turn rocks into buffaloes, then He could do the same thing turning sinners into saints. 

The Bible clearly teaches that death did not enter the world until Adam sinned: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Closely related would be Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death.” The death of men and animals did not happen until man sinned. 

Finally, as far as Scripture goes, the Bible also clearly teaches that the earth is relatively young. The Hebrew word for day “yom” is almost always used to describe an ordinary 24 hour day, and when it isn’t, the context is very clear that it isn’t. In Genesis 1, Moses knows that someone might ask about the length of days given the fact that the sun, moon, and stars are not created until day four, so Moses tells us exactly how long the days were: there was evening and there was morning, the first day, the second day, the third day. How did God cause an evening and a morning before there was a sun? The same way He spoke the sun and moon into existence from nothing. We also know that the Bible intends to describe how young the world is because Jesus explicitly says that Adam and Eve were created at the beginning of the world (not after billions of years):“But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mk. 10:6). 

A Failed Scientific Theory
Theistic evolution is also repugnant to reason and science and is an attempt to salvage a completely failed scientific theory. And here, I want to be clear that faithful scientific research and study is a central mission of biblical Christianity. The Dominion Mandate given to Adam and Eve includes the use of obedient reason, research, and examination of creation’s evidence. 

But theistic evolution contradicts reason and science beginning with its flagrant disregard for the Second Law of Thermodynamics or Entropy which states that things in nature tend to move from order to disorder – energy spreads out and becomes less useful over time. And no Big Bang, even set off by God, can give us zebras, solar eclipses, and J.S. Bach. Not only is this true in general, it is also true in particular with regard to information. Nothing in this world naturally goes from no information to some additional information by itself. Give the universe billions of years, and the ocean will not carve up an exquisite sand castle on a beach in Fiji. Leave an old IBM computer buried in a land fill, and give it billions of years, and it will not become a MacBook Pro or an AI supercomputer. But these are the ludicrous assertions of evolution. 

Natural selection and mutations only account for the rearrangement, redistribution, removal, or remodeling of existing genetic information. As Cornell University professor John Sanford has demonstrated through his ground-breaking work in genetics, genetic mutation has never been demonstrated to mutate in a truly new and beneficial way. Mutations are always deteriorations, even if some tiny fraction of them happen to aid in survival. Likening the beauty of the universe to bacteria developing immunity to penicillin is pretty hilarious.  

Furthermore, Darwin’s great hope in the fossil record has been a colossal disappointment, including to such famous Darwinian paleontologists as Stephen J. Gould who in one moment of honesty admitted, “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Most species exhibit no directional change… 2. a species do not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’” To which Gould and others have attempted to cover this lack with what they call “punctuated equilibrium,” which is a technical scientific term for “we couldn’t find any missing links.” And that’s because they don’t exist, and that is because all the families of creatures were spoken into existence by the Word of God from nothing as distinct supernatural acts. 

Conclusion
So theistic evolution is incompatible with biblical Christianity because it is unfaithful to Scripture’s central story: God created a good and sinless world which was rocked by the sin of the first man, and that sin brought the great curse of sin and death into this world. This sets up the Grand Narrative of God’s war against evil, culminating in the sending of His Son who lived a sinless life of obedience, died as a new Adam in our place, bearing the first Adam’s curse, and when He cried ‘it is finished,’ the power of the curse was broken, and at the resurrection, a new creation began to fill the world. Theistic evolution makes peace with sin and suffering and death and even blesses it. Theistic evolution plays fast and loose with God’s clear word on the age of the earth and the distinct creative acts of God in the successive days of creation. And finally, theistic evolution is offensive to biblical Christianity because it is repugnant to reason, defies fundamental laws of science, and is trying to prop up a theory that even its own advocates admit lacks evidence. 

I will leave you with one additional thought: we are living in the cultural and scientific fallout of evolutionary science. While a distinctly Christian worldview has managed to persist in bits and pieces, a culture that aborts millions of babies in the name of health care is the fruit of evolutionary science. A culture that celebrates hormone blockers for kids and mastectomies for teenage girls is the fruit of evolutionary science. And if all that were not enough, we just emerged from several years of scientific and medical madness in the Covid scam. From playing god in labs with gain of function research to the mass hysteria over a bad flu virus to the experimental vaccines and all the demands to “trust the experts” and “follow the science,” the scientific community has utterly beclowned itself. The same scientific establishment that has been predicting catastrophic rising sea levels and melted polar ice caps has been soberly insisting that we evolved from cat fish. This puts us in a very dangerous place since I certainly do not want to throw the baby of true science out with all this delusional bathwater. I’m grateful for antibiotics and good vaccines, but evolution is a mind virus in our cultural system and theist evolution is a particularly virulent strain. 

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

Confessing the Sins of our Land

In Scripture there are categories of sin that defile the land. These are often called abominations – moral pollutions that cause blood guilt, like a curse resting on the people of that land. For example, when there was an unsolved murder in Israel, the elders of the nearest city would bring out a heifer and kill it and wash their hands in the blood of the heifer swearing a vow that they were innocent of the blood and with a prayer to God to have mercy on them, and Scriptures says that God would forgive them of the bloodguilt. Of course, if the vow was false, they would be calling down a curse upon themselves.

Jesus seems to be alluding to this principle even as He is dying on the cross: “Father, forgiven them for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). In that case, Jesus is the murder victim, but He is also the sacrificial heifer, and the true elder of the city of Jerusalem. Pilate tried washing his hands and the Jews tried claiming His blood, but only those who would turn and repent would be forgiven by Christ’s blood. Ultimately, when Jerusalem refused to repent, all the faithful fled from the city, leaving the land polluted, and God sent His fierce judgment and destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. 

But while the righteous remain in the land, there is real protection even for those still in their sins. Just as God would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah while there were three righteous left in the city, Christians are true salt and light in our cities. 

This is one of the reasons why we confess sin corporately every Sunday. We are not merely confessing our own sins, we are also confessing the sins of our land, of our city and nation, and we are washing our hands in the blood of the innocent Christ so that the curse may not come upon our land and all men might be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. 

This is why we often finish our prayer of confession with the words, “we know if we in the church regard any iniquity in our hearts, this prayer will be ineffectual.” We are acknowledging that if we are washing our hands in this blood but hiding sin, we will be calling down a great curse on our land.

Photo by Dustan Woodhouse on Unsplash