Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 41

Tokens of the New Promised Land

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:1-3)

What’s really striking about this verse is that Paul is not only applying the fifth commandment to Gentile kids living in Ephesus, but he is also applying the promise. But the promise has clearly been expanded. Instead of being limited to the Promised Land, a small chunk of land in Palestine, Paul says the blessing of obeying parents now applies to everyone who believes everywhere, that it may go will with you and you may live long on the earth. The Promised Land in the New Covenant is every nation on earth and Heaven to come because Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth: all of the nations are His inheritance, as it says in Psalm 2. 

In the first conquest of Palestine, remember the spies went into the land and brought back tokens of the land, large bunches of grapes, pomegranates, and figs. Of course 10 of the spies were faithless and gave a bad report of the land: too many giants and large cities. But Joshua and Caleb pleaded with the people to believe the promises of God to go up and take the land. 

This bread and wine are tokens of the new Promised Land (like the grapes and figs the spies brought back) because Jesus purchased us and the whole world with His body and blood on the cross. But that means this bread and wine are even better than what old Israel had because this bread and wine are more like receipts of the conquest. This bread and wine are signs and seals of the body and blood of Jesus, the payment that purchased us and this whole world. He was our Joshua, our Caleb, but He didn’t just spy out the land. He actually fought and killed the three great Giants: Sin, Death, and the Devil who enslaved us all. 

So consider the land: our city, county, nation, the world. There are still giants and great cities. But the conquest is well under way. Here we are on the other side of the planet from where Jesus died and rose again. And millions are gathered in worship with us this Lord’s day all over the world. There is still much to be done, many giants to be slain, cities to be taken. But do not lose heart. Here are tokens of our coming victory. Jesus honored His Father, and so the Father gave Him the whole world, and by His grace, we are growing to honor our fathers and mothers, so that He will surely give us this land. 

Photo by David Köhler on Unsplash

Get Up & Get Back on the Field

“Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.” (Ps. 19:12-13).

People do not usually just up and commit adultery or murder. Usually, there’s a long period of relatively secret sins festering under the surface. Then, if those secret sins are not dealt with, presumptuous sins begin to go unchecked. They may be respectable at first or barely noticeable, but God sees them. These are angry outbursts, lies, a foul mouth, seeking out opportunities for lust. But you cannot sow secret sins or presumptuous sins without eventually reaping great transgressions. The principle here is: if you don’t want an overgrown garden, pull the weeds when they are small. 

But sin is not just morally wrong and harmful to you and others, sin is also taking you out play, taking you out of the action. Every Christian is on the field of battle. You do not have the option of opting out of this war. But through sin, you can certainly help the enemy and make a lot of trouble for your fellow soldiers. Then, one of the Devil’s favorite schemes is to get Christians to wallow around in their guilt and shame, furthering the mess. 

But here at this table, Jesus offers His body and blood shed for sins. That’s what this bread and wine mean. They mean that you can be clean. They mean that if you hate your sin, God hates it more and He’s glad you’re here. These gifts are for sinners. This bread and wine is not for soldiers who have perfect records. There are no perfect records in this room. 

Here, at this table, God offers to put you back in the game. And don’t misunderstand, this offer is available to you all week long. You don’t need to wait until Sunday to get back in the game: confess your sins and get clean right away. But if you’ve been laying on the field holding your knee for the last three days because you really blew it. I am authorized to tell you that your sins are forgiven. Get up and get back into the fray. 

When David prayed that God would create a clean heart in him and restore the joy of His salvation, he immediately added, “Then I will teach transgressors Your ways and sinners will be converted to You.” We have work to do, and a big part of that work is telling all our fellow sinners that there is forgiveness for every sin. And we know this because it has happened to us. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

The Social Justice Fight Right In Front Of You: COVID-19, Masks, & Shutdowns

Introduction
A few years back Pastor John MacArthur and a number of other pastors and Christian leaders put out the Social Justice and the Gospel Statement, and since then there has been growing awareness and discussion of the dangers of the “social justice” movement infiltrating various aspects of the Church and culture. The guys down at Founders have been particularly busy with continuing this project. I’m very grateful for all of that. Go team. 

At the same time, while there is necessary work to be done in statements and messages and conferences and documentaries, the most essential work of the Kingdom takes place right in front of you, in the local church, in your neighborhood, in your city. Our great rallying cry is Jesus is Lord. Because He died for our sins and rose from the dead to reconcile us to God and one another, He is the only way to the Father. He is the only way to justice and peace. This is why He is the Lord of justice, politics, economics, healthcare, as well as education, science, sexuality, and everything in between. He is Lord because He is the Master of those subjects, and those subjects only have consistent, coherent meaning in Him.

So what I want to say is that this COVID moment is the social justice fight right in front of you. If Jesus is Lord, then He must be obeyed when it comes to pandemics. If Jesus is Lord, then He must be obeyed when it comes to shutdowns, bail outs, mask mandates, seating capacities, civil disobedience, and the multi-layered jurisdictional Jenga involved in all of that decision making from your Thanksgiving dining room to city hall up to the Supreme Court. 

Jesus is Lord Not Marx
The fundamental objection we have with so-called “social justice” is at this point: Jesus is Lord, not Freud, not Marx, not Darwin, not MLKJ, not FDR or LBJ, and certainly not the current endowed Chair of White Sodomite Fragility Studies at the local Crackpipe University. But far too often, Christians say, “Jesus is Lord,” and then lap up whatever gruel is currently being offered by the cool kids cultural cafeteria. But “Jesus is Lord” means that His word is supreme and authoritative. It is not suggestions for a better life or happy thoughts for your morning devotions or a sexy tagline for your Instagram selfie. The Bible is authoritative in all that it addresses, and it addresses everything in principle.

My problem with the so-called social justice proposals for racial reconciliation is not the goal of reconciliation but with the starting point of Darwin, the plot points of Marx and Engels, and the exclamation points of Foucault and Derrida. Christians must begin with Bible, continue with Bible, and finish with Bible. We begin with Christ, continue with Christ, and finish everything with Christ. And if we’re doing it right, we will find all kinds of corroboration with natural law and common grace, but as one feisty German monk once put it, no thanks to them, God’s word abideth still.   

And to get right down to my point: Jesus gives civil magistrates certain authority and jurisdiction, pastors and elders certain authority and jurisdiction, and families certain authority and jurisdiction. All human authority is derived from and limited by Jesus, and that is the foundation of any discussion of justice. The civil magistrate has been given the authority of the sword, the power and authority to punish criminals (as defined by the law of God) and in so doing protect the lives and property of law-abiding citizens. The church has been given the authority to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments and teach the nations everything Jesus commanded, including the power to discipline and excommunicate persistent, high handed, unrepentant sinners. The family has been given the authority to oversee the health, welfare, and education of those under its care. 

Magistrates may not decide to add various matters to their job description, neither may pastors or fathers. Magistrates may not ordinarily be in the education, healthcare, or education business, nor may they administer sacraments. It is not the civil magistrate’s job to tell anyone what to wear or what to eat. The only place for health codes and emergency health orders is when there is immanent mortal danger. 

We’ve used the example for months but we can add a few: if there is a bomb in the building, if there is an active shooter across the street, if there is a fire in the building, or if there is a bubonic plague or some health danger the equivalent of an active shooter, the civil magistrate may temporarily interrupt the other jurisdictions. The other jurisdictions do not relinquish their authority, they merely submit to the other authority in that moment, assuming their good intentions and better judgment. This is like the man who shoves a little kid out of the road, prepared to be hit by a car in his place. However, when the civil magistrate says there *might* be a shooter, but we’re not really sure if he has a gun or whether he’s even a good shot or whether he will even show up, for the third month in a row, the church government may respectfully tell the civil magistrate to come back when they have better information. When you’ve been shoved out of the roadway a half dozen times in the last month and no sign of a reckless driver barreling down on you, you can tell the crazy man to stop shoving you (no matter all the statistics he cites about people hit by cars). Likewise, the family government need not submit to nutrition nannies at the health department, and this includes the lawful businesses families run and operate. It doth not matter how officious she seemeth. Just because somebody makes up rules and has an office at the local courthouse doesn’t mean those laws are just, legitimate, or lawful. 

Covid Social Justice
When we talk about “social justice” in its broadest sense we’re simply talking about justice applied to society. But if Jesus is Lord, what we’re talking about is biblical justice. But if Jesus is Lord, the first question that needs to be answered whenever there’s a problem is: whose problem is it? Whose jurisdiction is it under Christ? You can’t tell the score without a score card, and you can’t play a game if there are no agreed upon rules. If a pitcher suddenly objects that the batter is offsides, he doesn’t know what game he’s playing. So do you want biblical justice or not? Do you want the justice of God applied to society? Then what are you doing about the massive government overreach happening right in front of you? What are you doing about the civil magistrate’s involvement in healthcare, education, and now mask mandates, seating capacity limitations, shutting businesses down, and fines and misdemeanors? If you’re rolling over and taking it, then you’re not interested in real social justice at all.

On the other hand, if you’re up in arms about specious forms of social justice, the redefinition of human beings, the confusion of categories of sin and grace, and the resulting gospel confusion, but you can’t bring yourself to take any kind of stand on these matters of masks and kovid regulations, then you don’t understand what you’re talking about either. There is gospel confusion being smuggled into the church, but it turns out the smugglers can use more than one door. And you cannot stand there repeating your mantra about the evils of critical theory without recognizing the fact that critical theory has run right into your bedroom and is wrapping gags around your mouth in the name of “science.” Critical theory has run into your church and is barking orders about 50 percent capacity. 

And how’s that, you ask? Well, what is a person, a man, a woman? Are we merely members of classes of people? Are we merely essential workers or non-essential workers? Are we merely engaged in essential services or non-essential services? Are we essentially infected or infectious? Are we masked compliant or non-masked uncompliant? And which drinking fountain am I allowed to use? Where am I allowed to stand? How far apart? And who am I allowed to stand close to? This is not based on science, but worse still, it is not based on biblical categories at all. It is entirely capricious and tyrannical. It is unjust to treat people as infectious without proof. It is unjust to treat people as criminals without proof. It is unjust to criminalize normal human behavior. But what is driving all of this? A false social gospel. If you really love your neighbor you will mask up, cower in your basement, and report your neighbors for anything that looks like they’re having fun. That is defined as love. Why? Because the good news of the Covid gospel is that if everyone will just submit to whatever new draconian measure they make up, then we will all survive and peace and harmony will break out everywhere like Biden speaking in tongues or a bad rash, or something. 

Conclusion
Postmodernism taught us that everything is fundamentally a power play, and what we should have noticed is that that metanarrative (everything is a power play) was itself a power play. There is no objective truth, and truth, morality, and reality must be all constructed, they insisted, planning to construct their own truth, morality, and reality as soon anybody gave them the time of day. All of this is the necessary consequence of marinating in the sewage pond of Darwinism for a couple of centuries. If we are merely bags of protoplasm on stilts, then the rock bottom truth is that force and power is what runs the world. But it was always a lie, a stunt, a feigned ignorance to get Christians and all sane people to let down their guard for a minute. They deconstructed truth, goodness, and beauty with coy expressions of concern for the weak, and we let them run our universities, seminaries, and schools, and now some of them have been elected to office and are running the Covid clown show.

They have been tearing down Western civilization for decades in the academy, and so we can hardly be surprised when they continue the same project in the public square. Shut down churches? Muzzle the populous? Destroy businesses? Crater the economy? What an opportunity. Social justice and all its philosophically inbred kinfolk feign weakness and oppression in order to grasp power. They also opportunistically prey on the actual weak and oppressed in order to weaponize that weakness against the truth. But the cure is always worse than the disease. Is there true racism in pockets of America? Of course. Is it the widespread cancer that our overlords insist that it is? Not even close. But we are getting the full chemo treatment anyway. And this is because Darwin taught us that order arises magically out of the chaos. And lo, what has happened in 2020? We have a real disease that is dangerous for a relative few, and that is being leveraged to destroy freedom and create chaos for all. Why? So they can be in charge, so they can construct truth, morality, and reality according to their own whims and imaginations.

So you want true, biblical justice in the public square? You want the shrines of intersectionality and critical theories smashed? Then gather for worship, do not go along with the mask mandates, open your businesses, and speak up for the truth that is currently being crushed by capricious statist policies. At this point, the science is so manifestly clear (that the hyperventilating was not called for), that all the governors and city councils continuing to demand compliance are running their little commie wards on the basis of myth and fear and power tripping.

Remember: Covid-19 only spreads at church, Psalm sings, and Trump rallies. There is no Covid threat at BLM protests, Biden election celebrations, or when my mayor performs a private wedding ceremony.

Here is the social justice fight right in front of you.

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The Fullness of This Time

“In the fullness of time, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5)

God sent His own Son into the world in the fullness of time, and that means the time was exactly right for the mission. Everything had been leading up to that moment, according to God’s perfect plan. Not one thing was out of place. Every blessing, every calamity, every gift, every heartbreak, every detail made that moment pregnant for God to redeem the world. 

But that perfect timing was not a one-off event. We serve the God who rules every time and every season. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, the middle, and the end. And Solomon says, He makes everything beautiful in its time. This means that things don’t just happen. God sends everything when the time is right. 

He sends rain at just the right time. He sends hardship. He sends children. And He sends the silence, the sickness, the periods of joy and loneliness. But He does not send it randomly or capriciously. He sends everything in the fullness of time. He sends it when everything is ready. He sends it in order to make everything beautiful at just the right time. Sometimes, the gift is obvious, and sometimes it’s a lefthanded blessing, a difficulty, a hardship, even a calamity or trouble meant to teach us faith, to teach us to pray for real, to teach us to fight, to teach us to bless our enemies, to teach us to sing and laugh louder. 

So this means that God has sent us this moment, this time, this season, this year, this election. Or even better, God has sent us into this moment, into this time, into this year. This is not because we in ourselves are equipped for this. But this is because Jesus is. By the gift of His Spirit – He comes and dwells in those who believe in Him, so that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. 

So it is that ever since the first century God has been in the business of sending His Son into the world, to redeem the world. Before the foundation of the world, God determined that we would be born, that we would live in these days, and that He would send His Son to live in us for such a time as this. 

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Freight Train of Kindness

The Reformation was all about the kindness of God. In the midst of massive human failure, the good news of Jesus is that God has made a plan to have mercy on the world and save the human race. The law of God shuts every mouth in guilt and shame, but the kindness of God makes every mouth gape open with astonishment. God’s good gifts are piled up high: the kindness of creation: beauty, music, food, friendship, laughter, sports, family, colors, textures, the smell of rain. Then when we refused to thank God for all of His gifts, when we turned away from Him, He sent His Son for us anyway. And He not only took our sins onto Himself on the cross, He not only crushed death in His own death, but He forgave all our sins, clothed us in His righteousness, and gave us eternal life. Yes, Jesus died, and our salvation was costly. But there is another sense in which it was not hard for God to do at all. No one took Jesus’ life from Him; He laid it down and took it back up freely. It was all a gift, a free gift, and He did it so that He could adopt us into His family. So that we might be His children, so that He might be our Father, so that He might carry us on His shoulders, so that He might teach us the joy of abundant life, and all out of His sheer kindness and love. He did it for joy.

So this is the exhortation: be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as in Christ, God forgave you (Eph. 4:32). What is the tone in your car? What is the tone in your home? What is the tone in your bedroom? What is the tone in your backyard? What is the tone of your text messages? What is the tone in your heart? Fathers, what is your tone with your kids? Husbands, what is your tone with your wives? Wives? Kids? Bosses? Employees? Teachers? Students?

What is it to be a Christian except to be overwhelmed by the kindness of God? This is what it means to sing that His mercy endures forever. It’s to see the freight train of God’s kindness barreling down on you and there’s no end in sight. You can’t count all the cars. It’s lovingkindness and grace piled up for us and our children forever, and its kindness all the way down. God’s kindness is not limp. His kindness has a backbone. But it is shockingly good, and brave, and generous. And if you are overwhelmed by the kindness of God, if you can barely hold in the astonishment at God’s mercy to you, then how can there be anything else in your heart, in your mouth, in your life? The storms may come, but the kindness of God is a fortress that cannot be moved, and there is plenty of room for all. 

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God Over Us

Introduction
The fundamental divide in this world is between living under the reality of a transcendent, Creator God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit over all or not. There is either a holy, just, and personal God to whom all things owe their existence and to whom they will answer or not. This is a first order concept and a primary presupposition that effects everything at some point in some way. And therefore, this is the most significant distinction to make when it comes to any kind of political discussion. It is the watershed issue. There may be many disagreements on either side of that divide about how it applies exactly, but there is a gravity pulling in one of two directions, depending on which way you go. There is either a gravity of humility, teaching men to look up because God is over them, or else there is a gravity of pride, teaching men to look down because there need not be anyone over them. 

These two very different conceptions of the world will necessarily develop two very different notions of justice. One looks up in humility, recognizing that our justice, if it is to be any good at all, must in some way reflect the order and righteousness of the God of Heaven. The other looks down on all men as a mass to be herded and organized by whatever theory is in vogue today, whatever scheme will tend toward the goals that have been agreed upon at any given moment, which of course can and do change from moment to moment. While our understanding of the justice of God may alter from time to time, God’s justice itself never changes. It is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

The Problem
While this notion that there is a God over us, and His standards of justice and truth are fixed and immutable does tend to create humble men – all by itself, there is still a problem. Fallible men, even well-meaning, fallible men, don’t get justice right. We are not righteous in ourselves, and while we may get some things right, it’s always a mix. 

So those on the other side of the great divide, point this out and say, see? What difference does it make if you claim to have a standard if you can’t get the standard right? We’re all fallible and make mistakes, so whose to say? And besides, you claiming that you’re right in the name of God is a lot more dangerous than me claiming I’m right in the name of what makes most sense to me today. And there’s a surface level plausibility to this claim. It can sound all kinds of humble to say you’re just working off your common sense and it can seem arrogant to claim the authority of God for everything, especially if there’s a decent chance you might be wrong. 

But the problem is that you cannot actually banish absolutes from this world, anymore than you can banish God or some placeholder for Him. Just because your appeal is no longer to God in name doesn’t mean you have successfully rid your arguments of God in fact. Unless someone is willing to collapse into complete solipsism and nihilism – we can’t know anything and everything is meaningless, everyone still wants to live for something: good will toward men, happiness, justice, equality, whatever. But whatever that standard is, that is your god. And right on schedule that god begins acting like a god. But now instead of the life-Giving God of Creation, the saving God of the gospel, you have an inert idol for your god. You have vague notions and impressions and sensations that you call “freedom” or “equality” or “happiness,” but since they are vague and shapeless, their demands can be twisted and morphed into anything. This is how we’ve gotten to the point where courts can order boys to be allowed to be dressed as little girls, and this is called equality, justice, and love. This is how businesses can be ordered shut down unilaterally, and this is called equality, justice, and love. But this is manifestly not humility; it’s sheer arrogance and tyranny.

Different Justifications
In other words, it really does all come down to whether the Triune God is over us or some false notion of god in us. Either God is outside of us, and He draws near to us in His mercy and reveals Himself to us in His Word, or else people will deify themselves. Believe in yourself, follow your heart, and let’s all just come together in peace and harmony are all some version of let’s make ourselves into god. And having done that, we will make up whatever definition of justice, truth, equality, love, or harmony we like.

All of this leads to diametrically opposed notions of justification. To be justified is to be declared “in the right,” innocent of all charges. And communities are always bound up with varying doctrines of justification. Communities develop around what people believe is the right way to live or work or eat or educate their children. If God is the One who justifies, this leads to a particular kind of community that loves one another but is actually and increasingly free. But if man is the one who justifies (since he has made himself a god) this leads to an entirely different kind of community, one enslaved by fears and threats. 

When people think they are gods, they are inevitably at war. Polytheistic societies have always been full of waring gods. This is why pure democracy is inherently unstable, and it almost always quickly degenerates into an aristocracy and soon enough a dictatorship. But in the meantime, if you have no justification from God, you are left with seeking justification from man. Thus, even though other people pose a threat and rivalry to our godhead, humanists need other people to feel justified. This is not real community, but it is what every Christ-less community must reduce to ultimately. It is not a true community of love, forgiveness, and freedom. It is a cold war of threats and manipulations covered over in the veneer of caring and love. Do this and prove you care. Do this and prove you really love your neighbor. 

The Scandal
In the face of these false gods providing false justification and a false sense of community, God has declared sinners righteous right smack in the middle of history for the sake of Christ alone. But then God turned those same sinners loose to build and invent, to rule and discover, to execute justice and preach this gospel, knowing full well that they will get parts of it wrong and backwards and upside down. And this is what the world hates. It hates God’s grace. This grace covers His people all the way to heaven, forgiving all their sins, allowing them to see many of their mistakes along the way, and making them more and more like God all the way. For free.  

But the really wonderful thing is that this means that while God has declared sinners perfect and has begun the good work of actually making them perfect, God is not at all a perfectionist. This is the scandal of grace. The perfect God of heaven has turned sinners loose in this world with His name on them and under His complete blessing. The world is embarrassed by this. But God is not embarrassed by it in the slightest. He is proud of His people. He is pleased with them.

All humanistic schemes are basically perfectionistic at heart, which is to say that they must ultimately collapse into totalitarian regimes. They have no true grace because they have no true Savior. 

Humility under God is a high standard, but it’s the high standard of grace. And while it does aim for perfection and excellence in all things, it is astonishingly patient and not perfectionistic in the slightest because God really is patient and kind. Pride puts on a great show of high standards, but it is the high standard of pure arrogance. It’s puffed up and self-congratulatory and has a five second fuse.   

Conclusion
So this is the charge. God is in heaven. His Christ died for your sins, and He purchased You for eternal life. Believe this all the way down to the ground. This grace is entirely free, and it teaches you to hold your head up high, to look up, because God is over You. But He is also over city council, over the mayor, over the governor, over the nation, over the election, and over the whole world. But He is not over us like some kind of dictator. He is over us as a beaming Father, putting all things to right. All things belong to Christ, and therefore, all things are yours in Christ. You are free, so live in that freedom. 

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Postmodern Hijinks: Reformation 2020

A Message for Collegiate Reformed Fellowship

Introduction: The Reformation 

What does God do with messes? What does God do with failures in marriage, families, cities, and nations? What does God do with slavery, corruption, centuries of violence and bloodshed and lies? 

The gospel that hit Luther in the gut is the good news that when it pleases God to do it, He is free to raise the dead, set captives free, and change entire civilizations. This is because the gift that God gives is His righteousness, and His righteousness is not a vague, impersonal quality. His righteousness is the obedience, wisdom, power, and blessings of Jesus reckoned to sinners by faith alone and actually imparted to us by the presence of His Spirit living inside us. 

That righteousness is revealed and accomplished through the preaching of Christ crucified. When Christ crucified for sin is preached, the nations of men are drawn to Him. This is what Jesus said would happen: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me. This he said, signifying what death he should die” (Jn. 12:32-33). When Paul wrote the Galatians, he said that Christ has been crucified before their very eyes – how? By preaching the cross. 

This is the power of grace. When Jesus ascended into heaven, this is the power He had been given in fullness and poured out on the Church. All authority in heaven and earth – is the power of grace – the power of God’s favor, the power of God’s blessing. Received by faith alone.

Our Postmodern Moment 
But instead of planting seeds of faith, we have been planting postmodern seeds of doubt and cynicism for the last number decades, and lo, we are reaping a harvest of postmodern hijinks. 

We are in the midst of a massive cultural crisis that in many ways centers on the subject of power. Modernism and the Enlightenment announced the power of humanistic reason and logic and science, but that culminated in two World Wars leaving many disillusioned with the promises of modernity. Postmodernism is the drunk little brother of modernism, and it claims that modernism didn’t go far enough in rejecting Christendom and God’s authority and says that all power is evil and dangerous, including the power of language, stories, culture, morals, even truth. So postmodernism is broadly a project aimed at deconstructing all power structures or at least power inequities. This is where the verb “to empower” comes from. But postmodernism backs itself into an impossible corner since it uses language, stories, and power and makes its own claims about truth and morality even while swearing them off. 

All truth is culturally relative, they claim. And so we should ask: Is that statement true or culturally relative? All language is a power-grab, they claim. So we should ask: Are those words in that sentence a power-grab? Morality is culturally constructed and it’s wrong to oppress the powerless. To which some enterprising freshman should ask, but if morality is culturally constructed why not leave the white, heteronormative patriarchal culture alone? Who are you to try to impose your culture norms on our indigenous ways? Talk about colonizing hegemony. 

But postmodernism does have a point. Human power, language, morality disconnected from Christ is a terrible thing. But the answer is not trying to pretend that truth and morality and power do not exist or that they are entirely relative. Gravity can be a very dangerous thing. But you cannot deconstruct gravity. And since they are right that sinful people misuse language and morality and cultures to harm other people, we should not let any sinners near the control room. Why should we let the postmodernists near the steering wheel? What makes them think they are safe? But the current social justice movement is demanding the steering wheel. 

Panic Power
It turns out that marinating in postmodernism is a great way for a culture to be primed for panic and chaos. Everything from the sham impeachment, to media bias, to censorship, to cancel culture, to a sham pandemic, to the BLM/Antifa riots and looting and violence — all of it is particularly flammable in a culture that has rejected Christ. The Bible teaches that everything – absolutely everything – coheres (holds together) in Christ. And that means that it really is Christ or nothing, Christ or everything comes apart. So everything is coming apart right on schedule.

We don’t know what men or women are, what sexuality is, what marriage is, what families are, or even what people are, but we are also in the process of trying to throw away all meaning, all language, all nouns. This not only destroys our ability to communicate, but it reduces everything to coercion. Words, numbers, graphs, charts, facts are not about how they correspond to reality (or not) to be carefully considered and debated. They are all more or less ripe fruit to be flung in the great cafeteria food fight. If a man feels that he is a woman, you cannot reason with him, and if a law or court requires that kind irrationality be accepted or honored, it has de facto caved to the mob. Thus, a panic was unleashed on the world by folks who don’t believe in arguments only tactics.

Jesus is Lord
The Christian creed is Jesus is Lord. But it must be more than a mantra. It is the basis for any sort of Christian reckoning with power. And it begins with the realization that Jesus is the Lord of every individual’s salvation. He commandeers men and women, and He gives them completely new hearts. They do not help God in this process. They are passive; God is active. Those new creatures are not sinless, but they do love God, love to obey Him, and have ever increasing hatred of sin and evil. As in the last Reformation, we have many Christians in name who have not met the living Jesus, and we know this because Jesus does a better job than that. But when Jesus saves, true Christians live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, and they recognize that everything is held together and exists by the Word of His power (Col. 1, Heb. 1). He is Lord of all. And this is the only protection against the misuse of power by anyone. Christians don’t believe they are always right. We believe that Jesus is the only one who is always right.   

Conclusion
What do you do in a world that you can’t reason with? What do you do when any words, facts, and figures you raise to present another point of view are immediately sacked as evidence of your bigotry? Recognize that it is a world ripe for Reformation, and then: Confess your sins. Worship God. Go to work. Get married. Have kids. Laugh. Sing Psalms. Repeat. Why? Because Jesus is still Lord, because all authority and power has been given to Him, and because we know what God does with messes. God is free to save. God is free to speak the word and make our culture-storm become peace and calm. He rules the wind and the waves and every human heart. And Jesus died and rose again for the salvation of this God-forsaken world.

Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Strike Six Times

When Elisha would encourage Joash in his struggle with the Syrians, the prophet instructed the king to strike the ground with his arrows. The king struck the ground three times, and Elisha was very angry and said, “Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice” (2 Kgs. 13:19). 

The best of modern Christians strike the ground three times. Too often we have believed the lies of the world and the devil that being that kind of spiritual warrior means we must become prickly or legalistic or belligerent and boorish. And so we either hold back or else we think by being cranky, we actually are being faithful. But God desires neither. God would have us fight sin and folly until it is driven from every field. He would have us strike the ground five or six times. And He would have us do it with a song in our heart.  

So apply this to all of your battles: personal sin, challenges in your family, maybe the kids or in-laws, or maybe disagreements with neighbors, at work, maybe theological differences or political travesties or cultural chaos, or maybe health challenges or some other ache or pain in your body or soul. How can you be a jolly warrior? How can you fight the good fight and not lose your cool? How can you fight fiercely with joy in your heart? 

The key to being a jolly warrior is remembering that the war we are waging is the “good fight of faith.” What it is that overcomes the world? Our faith. Our faith in Christ who already died and rose again, our faith that He will make all things new, our faith that nothing can separate us from His love and all things must work together for good for us who love Him, so that in all these things we are more than conquerors. 

Augustine says: “Wherever faith dwells, the Devil is cast out. Believers are not only assured of emerging safely from every battle, but also that they will receive fresh strength in due time to descend again into the arena. Our faith will be victorious not only in one battle, or a few; but though it be assailed a thousand times, it will prevail over the entire world.” 

So how can we not face every battle with dedication and joy? 

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

The Signal to Charge

When Jesus first rose from the dead, there were no Christians, no churches, no presbyteries, no councils. There was only Jesus standing in a garden, maybe stretching a little. And Psalm 2 says that the Father was sitting in heaven laughing, saying to the nations of men: I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. This is my Son, today I have begotten Him: all the nations are His inheritance, the ends of the earth belong to Him. 

Forty days later, when Jesus ascended there were under a thousand Christians, with eleven leaders who had only recently run for their lives a little over a month before. They didn’t have fully developed creed; they didn’t have a book of procedures; they didn’t have Roberts Rules; they didn’t have doctrine of justification by faith alone hammered out; they didn’t even have the Trinity articulated clearly yet. What did they have? They had a risen King. They had seen with their own eyes sin, death, and the devil dead on a field. While they had cowered in their tents, they had watched Jesus face down the Greatest Goliath – Death itself – and Jesus had cut off his head and held it up for all to see.

And that was the signal to charge. Our Jesus struck the mortal blow and now the nations belong to Him. Now sin and death are on the run, like the first soldiers guarding the tomb. Our King lives, and He must reign until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet. There are different gifts and different tactics in every place, but there is one mission and let there be no excuses. We have the good news that will fill this world. The nations must come. Every knee will bow. 

Consent is a Sad Old Man

Introduction
A few days ago, I shared that mongrel soundbite from Biden’s townhall meeting last week in which he assured the American masses that in his administration, he will do everything he can to help 8 year olds be sexually lost and confused. And with that soundbite, I added this bit of cheery commentary, “I’ve said it before, but we need to keep saying it: If 8 year olds can “consent” to hormone therapy and sex change operations, then there is absolutely no reason why they can’t “consent” to sexual relationships. The trans-child movement *is* the pedophile movement.”

What I wrote is true, but I want to build a context that is also true and really important for Christians to keep in mind in all of this. And the main point is simply that “consent” is an idol that betrays, maims, and ultimately destroys its worshipers (like all idols do). Pointing out the slippery slope of “consent” is not me celebrating any so-called glories of that Wench-Goddess La Consent. Pointing out the rotting-corpse end of that road is simply pointing out its folly. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of that road is a fatal collision with a telephone pole named reality (Prov. 14:12). The end of that road is a sad old man on television who doesn’t know what office he’s running for muttering absurdities and filth.  

The Religious Roots Consentolatry
But since at least the Second Great Awakening, Charles Finney, and a whole bunch of theological malarky, American Christians have been putting up with a greenhouse that grows this gunk. The Church has no further than a mirror to look for the cause of this sad situation. How could “consent” have become the goddess of our age? How could the false gospel of our culture have become “you can be anything you want to be?” If you can wish upon a star and give your parents the finger and it will all work out in the end – the moral of most modern children’s stories – then a little boy can too be a girl if he wants and who says he cannot be the “special friend” of some older man? 

Despite many well-meaning saints down through the decades, many of whom are no doubt now in glory, man-centered religion has been put up with, cooperated with, defended, and venerated. And what I mean by man-centered religion is Christianity and all its cheap knock-offs that preach and teach a neutered God who desperately wants to save sinners but can’t because He is powerless before the Almighty Throne of Consent, as though Jesus is knock-knock-knocking at the door of sinners’ hearts begging to come in. And when God is imagined that way, the Church necessarily begins to become like that graven image. So the gospel must only be an “invitation” with lots of doilies and lame jokes and tearful pleas. The Church becomes a whore willing to flirt and compromise if only she can get a few more people in the door. The lights must be turned down low, the songs must be sentimental and emotionally manipulative, and the messages must be dumbed down stump speeches and night club comedy. And yes, I’m talking about Arminianism, free-will-ism, and every three-eyed bastard of the same stock that has been allowed into the church, youth groups, worship songs, seminaries, and so on. And don’t get me wrong: piles of so-called Calvinists and Reformed types are busy imitating that Red Light District Christianity.

My point here is not to get you to picket your saintly grandmother’s house because she never could quite understand all that predestination stuff. My point is not to countenance a bunch of cage-stage belligerence. My point is to simply connect the dots, so that where there are conversations to be had, decisions to be made, they may happen graciously, firmly, joyfully, and fully cognizant of the stakes. Since God is exhaustively sovereign, what men mean for evil is constantly being turned to good. God even draws straight lines with our bad theology. He is patient and kind, and so must we be. But that is no excuse for laziness or apathy, especially since over the long haul, we still generally reap what we sow. And right now we’re reaping a crop of bull thistles five miles wide.

As Free as a Bird
Let me be clear: I believe in Free Will. I believe that man is a free agent to make choices according to his nature. A man may not choose to fly. A man may not choose to be a woman. A man may not choose to be God. A bird is free to fly, but not free to breathe underwater or play the violin. A man may choose to have a hamburger, a taco, or a salad as he likes, when he likes. But a sinful man cannot choose to become righteous. And this is fundamentally because He does not want to become righteous. It is not in his nature. “There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3: 10-11). There you have it. 

What does natural man do? He does not seek God. He does not understand the things of God. And he likes it that way. He is an enemy of God. The only thing that will change his certain collision course with God’s wrath is a sovereign intervention. This sovereign intervention is nothing short of a spiritual resurrection. To be dead in your sins is to be completely powerless to save yourself, to even want to save yourself. You cannot be kind of dead or sort of dead or mostly dead. God did not show Ezekiel a hospital room full of people nearing death if they didn’t get the medicine. God showed Ezekiel a graveyard, and not a graveyard of recently deceased bodies. It was a graveyard full of dry bones, picked clean by the buzzards. This is the state of fallen man. You are a Halloween decoration, a biology major’s homework assignment, a dog’s treasure trove.

Only the Spirit of God can make those bones live. Only God can make the dead live. Your consent is worthless. Your consent doesn’t exist. All your consent accomplishes is more dead rot. Your consent is the problem. Your desires are filthy. Your “free will” is as free as a corpse. If you are alive in Christ, God made you alive. Jesus broke down the door of your heart. He gave you His Spirit and a new heart with new desires. You once were dead, but now you live. You once were blind but now you see. And that happened because God didn’t listen to what you wanted. God in His kindness only saves the unwilling. Salvation is not consensual. Salvation is not collaborative. Salvation is sovereign grace.

Culture as Religion Externalized
So this is the deal: an Arminian culture, a society that worships the so-called free will of man is growing a particularly gnarly form of mold that eventually blooms into tranny and pedo-perversions. Henry Van Till once famously said that culture is religion externalized. You cannot worship the will, the heart, the desires of man and then draw arbitrary lines at 18 or 21. Says who? Why do you get to impose your will on me, on her, on him, or she-him, or he-her? 

Do Calvinists sin? Of course. Can Calvinists be belligerent? Yes. But they shouldn’t be. They have no business being coercive or demanding because the thing that won them was God’s grace. The only thing that God uses to bring dead sinners to life is kindness, mercy, and love. But it is no impotent love; it is an efficacious love. It is a Love that laid our sin on His only Son, our death on His cross, our guilt in His suffering. And God drained our sin, death, and guilt from our dead corpses and left us with nothing but life. 

The last thing that needs to be said regarding consent is that God is the Lord of salvation, but He is also the Lord of history, the Lord of politics, and the Lord of life. In other words, He is Lord of all, and He rules in lovingkindness. His love is fierce and pours out wrath on evil, but there is no other option. All other options are dead ends. Either we will submit to His kind Word, His gracious standards for protecting women and children from predators or else we will leave our women and children prey to the whims and caprice of mobs and men. If we worship God and obey His commands as they relate to sexuality, marriage, family government, adultery, civil government, and so on, we will have challenging situations, and some elements of God’s law may make you scratch your head. But the fundamental question is whether you will trust God or not. Is Jesus Lord or not? If we will worship Christ as Lord, a very different culture will emerge.

Conclusion
Consent is no fence, no sturdy wall, no fortress of anything. God’s Word, His Law, His Love is our Rock, our Fortress, our Strong Tower. His Will protects. His Will defends. Not my will, not your will, not the will of the people, not the will of the state, but God’s will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. The will of man is false and fickle. Consent is a sad old man. But God’s will is a good will; the consent of God is sturdy and full of mercy.