Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 42

Servants of the Lord of All

Jesus said that the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is the servant of all. And this was not His way of saying that Christians shouldn’t strive for greatness or that Christians will only ever be great in Heaven after being walked all over in this life. No, Jesus taught us to pray that the Kingdom of Heaven would come and that the will of God would be done on earth as it is in Heaven. 

So this means that we are to aim at heavenly greatness, but heavenly greatness is not irrelevant to earthly history. In fact, the greater the heavenly greatness, the more impact on earthly history. But it really is heavenly greatness, which means that we must weigh and measure greatness with a heavenly standard, not an earthly one. 

When we do that, we find that some of the great movers and shakers of history were killed in coliseums and burned at the stake. Some of them raised children, feeding them, clothing them and teaching them the gospel, and those sons and daughters went on to be great preachers, teachers, missionaries, nobles, kings, queens, wives, and mothers.  

We live by faith, which means obeying God no matter what, and trusting Him for the outcome. Those who lived by faith in the past closed the mouths of lions, conceived children in their barrenness, were mighty in battle, and lived in deserts and caves in exile. The common thread was faith, a living, obedient faith, that served Christ and therefore was a servant of all. 

A servant of all is not a rug to be walked over by anyone’s whims. A servant of all is the man or woman or child who is set on obedience to Christ. That obedience is our service to Christ and therefore for all. We are serving Christ here as we worship, and we are serving the world. We are the servants of all because we serve the Lord of all. Sometimes we sing psalms in the city square, but most days we teach our kids about Jesus, and do the dishes and laundry and go to work and share what we’ve been given with our neighbors.

Photo by Diego González on Unsplash

Under the Blood

It’s no accident that it was at the Passover celebration that Jesus instituted this meal. The first Passover was in Egypt when Israel killed lambs and put the blood over the doorways of their homes, and they ate unleavened bread. That night the Angel of Death came through the land, striking down firstborn sons. Only those with blood over their doors were spared. And in this, God offered both mercy and justice. Surely by the tenth plague word got out and many of the Egyptians came to stay with Israelites or even imitated them and were spared the tenth plague. But Pharaoh had claimed Israel as his son, so God struck down Pharaoh’s son, and set Israel free.

When Jesus says, “do this in remembrance of me,” we might just as easily translate it as, “do this as my memorial.” A memorial points back to some great historic moment – like the rainbow, pointing back to the flood. But memorials are not just reminders for us (although they certainly are that). Memorials are also reminders to God. This isn’t because God needs reminding; He promises to never forget His promises. But He also promises to always remember His own reminders. 

This meal is the great memorial of the Greater Exodus, the Greater Passover, the Greater deliverance from every Egypt. The Angel of Death still deals out God’s judgments in this world. But all who are covered by the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, are safe in the household of Faith and have His blood over their doors. And as the judgements of God fall on the earth, every form of slavery is broken: political slavery, economic slavery, bondage to sin, addiction, fear, guilt, and shame. And what does it mean to be covered by the blood? It means all your sins are forgiven. You are completely clean. Do you believe? Then you are under the blood. 

At the first Passover, the Israelites were dressed for travel, expecting deliverance. As it happens, we eat this meal at the end of our service, getting ready to go out from here as well. We are going out into our Canaan: our neighborhoods, cities, work places, schools, all land promised to Abraham, the inheritance of Christ. But as you go out, go out under the blood. The blood of Christ does not merely protect You in here. It is on you and in you and all around you. You are the baptized, the Spirit-filled, the forgiven. Go into all the world, and go under the blood.

So come and welcome, to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash

Blessings Concentrate

We have emphasized for many years that worship is warfare, and we have seen that up close this last week. God gave us a wonderful victory specifically through singing psalms and hymns. But it’s worth zooming out a bit so that we do not lose sight of how this works. What happened cannot be rightly understood by a simple snapshot or even a few minutes of video footage. In order to view these events rightly, we need look at this whole moment through the lens of Scripture. 

When God called Abram to Canaan and promised to give it to him, Abram did not own a single acre, but he believed God and began building altars, calling on the name of the Lord wherever he went. Later, Joshua had the priests carry the ark in front of the army, marching around Jericho for seven days until the walls came tumbling down. That was the first great victory in Canaan, and it was some four hundred years after Abram had built his first altar in the land. What we need to see is the fact that God did in fact answer the prayers and praises of Abram. But Canaan was always a type of the entire world. God promised Canaan to Abram, but He also clearly promised him the whole world: In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And so it is that many centuries later, Jesus, the seed of Abraham, was born, lived a perfect life, was crucified for sinners, and raised from the dead to make all things new, to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found. 

The method hasn’t really changed in all this time. But the point is that worship piles up. Worship grows in concentration of spiritual force. Blessings multiply like compound interest. Worship is our battering ram, and every Lord’s Day we take another swing at the gates of Hades. But every swing is actually heavier, every swing is pulled back a little further. This is because our worship includes the worship of all the saints. From the worship of Abel to Abraham to Israel at Jericho to David to Paul to Augustine to Calvin to Bunyan to Bonhoeffer to our own parents and grandparents, and all of it is offered up in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus.

God takes the long view, the wide angle view, and that means that the small victory we celebrated this week is part of a much larger picture, a picture that will continue after us and includes decades and centuries of Christians worshiping God every Sunday, Christians obeying God in the little things, Christians confessing their sins to one another and forgiving one another, Christians walking by a faith that is entirely a gift, a faith that overcomes the world.

Not Enough Molotov

Introduction
By now you have heard of some excitement in our little town of Moscow, Idaho. One of my deacons and two of my parishioners were arrested Wednesday at a flash Psalm Sing at our city hall in protest of the recent renewal of a mask mandate. Yes, that’s right. Three people were arrested for singing Psalms (for like 15 minutes) and not social distancing or wearing masks. 

To this point, there have been a few warnings given out, maybe a citation or two, but only threats of misdemeanors, certainly no mention of arrests. But apparently there was no real crime to adjudicate in town Wednesday, and our “peaceful protest” didn’t include enough Molotov cocktails or brick throwing. 

What Did We Do and Why?
Rewind a little and zoom out. First off, it is our custom as a church to gather in the city square to sing several times a year. We usually do a Christmas carol sing around the holidays, and then occasional Psalm sings throughout the year. So first off, it’s worth noting that this is just something we do. Our people love singing Psalms, and occasionally we sing them out in public to invite our community to join us in worshiping our King. Jesus is Lord of Moscow, Idaho, and so we feel free to honor Him as such. 

Second, over the summer there were three Black Lives Matter/Defund the Police rallies in downtown Moscow, and this was, as far as we could tell, not technically legal according to the various C0vid restrictions in place at the time. But a city permit was issued for at least one rally, and as far as I know, no arrests or citations were issued. So just to double check city consistency, we asked for a permit the next week for a flash Psalm sing at that time, and we were granted it. The permit had been filled out when we received it, limiting our gathering to 50 people, but the BLM rallies were certainly not concerned about exceeding 50, so we probably had a couple hundred. But no one bothered us, no police officers present that I recall, and as you might expect in a city in America, no citations, no arrests for singing Psalms in the city square, no social distancing, no masks. And, we might as well note: nobody got the dreaded kohvid. That was July. 

Around the same time the mayor’s first declared emergency order requiring masks and social distancing was issued on July 2. His order was ratified by our city council shortly thereafter. Despite public objection, the mandate was ordered through the beginning of October. This bring us up to the present. 

But Wait There’s More
I need to fill you in on a couple of other details. First, as I noted above, apart from some heavy-handed pressure from cops to college age kids, mostly girls from what I hear, there was no significant enforcement. I’ve walked around downtown for months, often with friends, and have walked by police officers numerous times without so much as a howdydo, which come to think of it, is a bit disappointing. But I have never once worn a mask during these rueful times of Ye Great Mayoral Mandate. But a few weeks back, a couple of cousins were walking down the sidewalk together and they were accosted by a couple of cops who wanted to know if they were related. When they explained that they were cousins, the cops told them they would need to social distance, since they were not from the same immediate family. The young people being faithful and zealous Christians and all explained that they would not do that. The cops flexed their law enforcement muscles a bit, and the young people were cheerful and respectful and firm, doing us all proud. I don’t remember all the details, but I believe the scene climaxed after they were given an “official warning,” and then once more told they needed to social distance, when the reply came again that they would not, the cops said they would have to issue them misdemeanors, and the young people cheerfully informed the cops that they understood, but they weren’t budging. The cops then said they were going to drive around the block (counting to 3) and if they were still not social distancing, they would issue the aforementioned misdemeanor. The young people said they would wait cheerfully for their return (somewhat nostalgically, I suppose) while not social distancing in the slightest. The cops drove away, and the young people waited. And waited. And after a number of minutes (at about 3 and 15/16ths), they concluded that the cops had been called to more important business and would not be returning after all. There may have been a slight disappointment in their hearts, but they managed to keep a stiff upper lip and move on.

The point of this interlude is simply to note and underline that heretofore, the cops have been a minor nuisance but have mostly seemed to understand that this is all a bunch of sillyweed. To those few desperate detractors out there claiming this was all a political stunt, the fact of the matter is that we routinely have psalm sings out in public. We have routinely done so without being molested or harassed or arrested. And in the face of the mask mandate, everything has be warnings, maybe a couple of citations, threat of misdemeanor and fines, but nothing whatsoever about arrests. No one went to city hall on Wednesday expecting to be arrested. Not even Gabe. In fact, Gabe was expected home shortly after 5pm with a few extra groceries for his wife. After he was released from jail a few hours later, he found a nice text from his wife letting him know not to worry about the groceries. And of course she added that she was quite proud of him. As we all are.

And Another Thing
Another reason why the mask mandate is ridiculous is because the Moscow Police Department and Moscow city council know it’s ridiculous. They don’t really believe there is any public health emergency. The police are not dashing about our streets with steel in their eyes protecting us from that nefarious deadly virus. They have not been running security drills or reconnaissance missions in Friendship Square. No tanks or armored vehicles have rolled past my office on Main St. The hospital is not full or overflowing. The local graveyard is not a mess of dirt piles and coffins and funerals. There is nothing remotely approaching emergency in our streets or on the horizon. And this is because for those under 70, there is an over 99% recovery rate. They wouldn’t be able to gin up an actual emergency even if the mayor ordered mandatory licking of all doorknobs.

But with the mask mandate expiration looming, the city council met this last Monday night and without anything remotely resembling science to appeal to, and in the face of numerous citizens pleading with them not to renew or extend the order, they defied the citizenry that elected them and extended the order to the beginning of January. Remember, we live in a tiny town of 20K people in Idaho. Not exactly a densely packed metropolis, unless you count the potatoes. There have been a few hundred confirmed cases in our county of the BadFlu-2 and zero deaths. Did I mention zero hospitalizations? (Ok, maybe one) But I do know that there are two overflow tents that could fit maybe five people each sitting vacant and mournful outside the hospital for lo these many months, the haunt of stray cats breeding into some kind of feral nightmare as we speak. 

Where was I? Ah, and to top it all off, there are growing stories and rumors of our mayor and city council members also not living like they are in anything close to a real emergency. They, like most other normal human beings in our community, are trying to go about their lives normally. Our mayor officiated a wedding on September 5 with at least one council member present as well as law enforcement and (like normal human) beings did not social distance or wear masks. Does the deadly virus travel through the air at weddings? Does it know the difference between private property and city hall? I’m so confused. Ok, I’m not really confused. Anyone with eyes to see can see exactly what’s going on. A bunch of our leaders have their pants on fire. 

So what’s a Christian community to do in the face of such injustice, hypocrisy, and double standards?   

Sing Psalms Of Course 
Why? Because Psalms are the battle hymns of the Church, the War Songs of Christ. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers in heavenly places. Worship is our warfare. So we scheduled a flash Psalm sing protest. 

Abraham ran bombing runs through Canaan, building altars throughout the land, claiming it for his descendants in faith, and we do the same, offering sacrifices of praise, the fruit of our lips. Joshua sent the ark around Jericho for a week until the walls came tumbling down. Jehoshaphat sent the choir out as the vanguard of the army of Israel, and God set ambushes for their enemy (2 Chron. 20:22). Our city belongs to Jesus, and our city is currently in high defiance of His reign, on a number of fronts, but certainly on this matter of declaring a health emergency when there is manifestly not an emergency, by requiring perfectly healthy young people to pretend they are sick and/or contagious, and meddling in the private lives and decisions and responsibilities of thousands.

As I told the police officers as they were arresting Gabe and Sean and Rachel Wednesday night, what they were doing was not lawful. The First Amendment does not get suspended for a bad flu. The First Amendment protects our right to free speech, to peaceful assembly, to worship unmolested, and to petition for redress of grievances. We were doing all four of those things Wednesday. In fact, what we were was completely legal even by Moscow code and the Mayor’s sham emergency order. It is completely legal even with the silly order in place, for us to assemble, to speak freely, and exercise our freedom of religion. What was illegal and unjust was the infringement of those God-given rights. The police officers and Police chief who participated in the arrests should be ashamed of themselves and apologize for not actually enforcing the true law of the land with any kind of equity, consistency, or truth. They should also apologize for not reading or knowing Moscow city code and merely bowing to the dictates of bureaucrats. I would urge the Christians on the force in particular to read the constitution and city codes carefully. Those of us protesting actually have the law on our side. Any harassing or hindering of our gatherings is illegal and unlawful, even without social distancing or masks.

Conclusion
So, we will be doing the same thing again tonight at 5pm at city hall. We will be singing the War Songs of Jesus. Pray for us. Pray for our law enforcement to do justice. Pray for our city council and mayor. Pray that God would open eyes to the truth, and that many would come to know Him. And if you’re not local, tune in and sing along, there should be live feeds for the event.

Not the Name Tags

Pastor Wilson has often warned us over the years about what he has called “the fellowship of the grievance” – the phenomenon of folks who may barely know one another or have little else in common, but by some magnetic force in the universe they find one another in order to share their grievances. And so a sort of pseudo-fellowship emerges, but the glue that holds it together is complaining, sharing frustrations, airing rumors, gossip, accusations, and so on. It’s not real fellowship at all, but it masquerades in Christian circles under the guise of Christian concern, prayer requests, and looking for counsel. 

Satan does not creep into churches and houses with a name tag which reads: Dragon of Old, Deceiver and Accuser of the Brethren (Beware!). No, Satan creeps into churches and houses with smooth words and spiritual tones. The Bible says he comes disguised as an angel of light. He comes pretending to be a friend to the lonely. He comes pretending to offer comfort to the hurting. He comes pretending to offer unity for those who feel left out. In fact, he would not mind showing up assuring you that she would never want to participate in a fellowship of the grievance. Never, never. She just has some concerns about some things in the church, some things in the community, and she just wants a second opinion. He just wants to get your advice. No slander, no badmouthing, no complaining. 

But the crucial thing is not in the advertising. The crucial thing is not what’s on the name tag. The crucial thing is what is actually happening. Of course friends need advice and counsel, the lonely need friendship, and the hurting need comfort. But Christian fellowship offers true friendship which drives straight toward solutions. Let’s go talk to that person right now. Let’s go make it right. 

We know what true fellowship is because God invites us here to this table of fellowship week after week. And here God does not flatter us or lie to us or provide false comfort. Here, He gives us the broken body of His Son, the shed blood of His perfect and beloved Son, and says, Here, my life for yours. He tells us the truth in love about our sin and then by His goodness leads us straight to repentance. So this is true fellowship, true friendship. You cannot be at this table, in the fellowship of Jesus, and also partake of the table of demons, the fellowship of the grievance. This is the fellowship of joy, the fellowship of forgiveness, the fellowship of sincerity and truth.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Jon Tyson on 

God For Us

“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31).

How do we know that God is for us? Paul continues: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall he not also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32)

Most sin flows from fear. We fear being caught, so we lie. We fear being left out, so we steal and cheat. We fear injustice and so we blow up and hate and kill. We fear pain and oppression, so we dishonor and disobey authority. Elsewhere the Bible says that we fear death and that is fundamentally what keeps us enslaved to sin (Heb. 2:14-15). And it really is a kind of insanity: we go back to sin because we are afraid of death, but sin only brings more death. It’s like smoking more cigarettes because you have lung cancer and you’re afraid of dying. 

Why do we run to sin? Why are we afraid? Fundamentally, we are afraid because we are guilty. We are like Adam and Eve in the garden trying to hide in the bushes from God. And why do we hide? Because we believe that God is against us. And He is against us in our sin. He is against us clinging to our sin.

But the Bible says that God is for us. And we know that He is for us because He spared not His own Son and delivered Him up for us all. If God gave His only Son for us, how could He be against us? But this was not just a one-off thing: if God gave His Son, how will He not also freely give us all things? What things? Joy in your marriage, fellowship around your table, fulfillment in your work, healing estranged relationships, harmony on our streets, justice in the public square, peace in your heart. Why wouldn’t God give us those things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Guilt is what makes us afraid, and fear of God’s judgment keeps us locked in a cage. But Jesus was crucified to take all of our guilt. He was crucified to break us out of that prison. Therefore, God is for us. And we cannot be afraid anymore. 

Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash

Manifest Perish

So it turns out the Bible is right. 

“And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish” (Dt. 8:19).

We are living in days of manifest perish. This is sort of like manifest destiny except instead of falling down the stairs six at a time head first, there’s also an angry craftsman tool chest doing cartwheels behind you.

I can already hear some first year seminary student piping up in the back: But that was in the Old Testament! And that is most certainly correct, my fine sir, but the question we must follow up with is: But is Jesus King over every nation? Does the “all” in “all authority in heaven and on earth” include the authority over the US President, Congress, and Supreme Court? Do those leaders have to answer to Jesus Christ for their words, thoughts, and actions – not only in their personal lives but in the entirety of their public lives? Ok, then. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He judges the nations. He raises up kings and throws them down. And He judges righteously, according to the light given to every nation – though He calls everyone everywhere to submit to His reign now – now that He has risen from the dead. 

America has sinned against great light. We have been blessed not merely with generic niceties, good wine, and joyful harvests, our land has experienced Deuteronomic blessings. What do I mean? I mean that America (and the west generally) has received massive and remarkable blessings over the last 500 years in particular that do not compare with the preceding centuries of human history. And the question is: where did that come from? Where did the economic progress and prosperity come from? Where did the scientific and medical breakthroughs come from? Where did the technological and industrial explosions come from? Where did our freedom come from? And you really only have two options. Either you say it was some kind of random, either dealt by the capricious hand of Darwin’s Tramp Chance or else some form of theistic inscrutability – God the Whimsical and Random. Or else you look at this mind-blowing wealth and progress and ingenuity and freedom and fall on your knees and worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus because you see it as intentional, covenantal gift piled on top of His gifts of salvation, faithfulness, and obedience to His Word. 

Now I suppose someone of the more Whimsical God persuasion could say that He too gives all the glory to God. But the point is whether we can look around us in any given moment and broadly trace the blessings of God or not. Are the gifts of God strewn about at random or are they bestowed with some (finite) measure of traceable patterns. In other words, the Bible (the New Testament even) says that God is not mocked and men reap what they sow (Gal. 6:7). And so we press the question: Do nations reap what they sow? Do cultures reap what they sow? And to our point: may nations and cultures sow faithfulness and consequently reap 30, 60, and a 100 fold when in the history of the world the most common grace saturated nations might find themselves with a real bumper year of 10 fold?

While to be sure, America is not in the exact covenantal position as ancient Israel was, and the new Israel proper is the Christian Church, nevertheless, the point is that God still deals with political nations today in analogous ways. The role of nations in the New Covenant continues so far as nations are to be discipled and taught to obey Jesus and nations will bring their treasures into the New Jerusalem, and in the seed of Abraham all the nations of the earth will be blessed (or cursed) (Mt. 28, Gal. 3, Rev. 22). 

But this means that when a nation forgets God’s law, rejects God’s word, that nation’s world will come apart. It will perish. As sure as the sun comes up in the east and burns out in the west, as sure as water marches down, if you worship other gods, God will destroy you. Period. Full stop. And if a nation experiences Deuteronomic blessings, then it most certainly can fall under Deuteronomic cursing. 

“How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?” (Dt. 32:30). How could a nation with so many millions of professing Christians put up with the wholesale slaughter of the unborn for 50 years? How could a nation with so many millions of professing Christians be cowed into socialized retirement funds, socialized schools, and nearly-socialized medicine? How could a nation with so many professing Christians be hiding the bushes, all masked up, and afraid to meet for worship, bossed around by tinpot dictators? 

Our Rock has sold us, and the Lord has shut us up. 

So what is to be done when our Rock has old us, and the Lord has shut us up? We must do what the righteous have always done in every generation. Repent of our sins, refuse to participate in the idolatry, testify against it, and then get back to work. The thing about Deuteronomic blessing is that when God sends it, it comes like a flood. “And it shall come to pass, if thou shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God… that the Lord they God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth; and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee…” (Dt. 28:1-2). When the blessings of God come upon a people, that people can’t go anywhere or undertake anything without His blessing following them and covering them: in your cities, in your fields, in your flocks, in your baskets, in your cabinets, on your computer, in your garage, in the car, when you come in and when you go out (Dt. 28:3-6).

Do not misunderstand: this is all grace from first to last – it’s all God’s gift and kindness, but there is a kind of blessing that piles up, a kind of blessing that multiplies, that acts like compound interest, that multiplies exponentially. We have experienced that kind of blessing in this land in the past, and we are currently experiencing the consequences of thinking we are the ones who pulled those blessings out of the sky for ourselves. We grew obese with pride and claimed that our own hands have gotten this wealth and ingenuity and progress, and so God has given us over to our own devices, our own folly until we turn back to Him. But if we will turn back, He will bless us again, and perhaps the first sign of that blessing will be the restoration of our nerve.

Photo by Corey Young on Unsplash

Both Hands Free

You can’t fight sin with a guilty conscience. At best you’ve got a hand tied behind your back while the enemy comes rushing in. 

So how do you get both hands free? By believing and receiving the forgiveness of God. 

In Hebrews it says we have an anchor within the veil. Do you know what that means? It means you have an anchor in Heaven, in the Most Holy Place. It means you have a direct, unbreakable chain that goes all the way to the throne of God in eternity, that cannot be broken, that cannot come loose. This is because it is anchored to Jesus who is seated at the right hand of the Father. And Jesus will reign until every enemy has been put beneath His feet. 

This is why Paul can exclaim: What can separate us from the love of God? How can you get lost in the stormy seas of this world if you have an anchor within the veil? You can’t. 

That anchor that runs from your heart all the way to heaven is inscribed with one word over and over and over and over. It seals every link of that unbreakable chain: And that word is forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven. 

What have you done? What have you looked at? What have you thought? What words have come out of your mouth? Do you regret it? Are you sorry? Do want to be clean? Jesus say, behold I make all things new. 

Jesus gave us this meal because He knew what we needed to hear. In fact, He knew that hearing it wouldn’t be enough for stubborn sinners. So He commanded us to eat it and drink it. What are you about to eat and drink? You’re about to eat and drink God’s declaration of the remission of all of your sins. With every bite, with every swallow hear, taste the word: forgiven, forgiven, forgiven. And this is why you are most welcome here. Use both hands. Both of your hands are free. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash

A Culture to Fight With

A culture is a complex collection of shared practices, customs, and instincts driven by shared beliefs and enacted and embodied with a similar language, entertainment, food, tools, living and working spaces, games, and rituals. While many different cultures overlap in numerous ways, it takes a certain concentration of these factors for an identifiable culture to emerge. 

We are self-consciously working to build a Christian culture here in Moscow, centered on the worship of the Triune God. This means that Lord’s Day worship is our touchstone. Everything we are doing starts here and ultimately returns here. But we want to be clear that this is not just something we do, it is driven by hearts that have been made new. We have been born again. Our hearts are clean, and we have been given a joy that can never be taken away. And so we gather with the saints to praise the name of Jesus, to hear His word, to feast at His table, to offer up our prayers, and to be sent out with His blessing on our heads. 

And what are we sent out to do? The first thing we are sent out to do is build houses – households. These are marriages and families for sure, but households can also include close friends, servants, employees, boarders, and others without immediate families. Households are places where we practice the fruitfulness of Christian culture. We practice Christian language, confession and forgiveness, organization, coordination, hospitality, storytelling, and productivity. Households are where people are made – and not just new babies (though it certainly includes that), but the entire formation process – sleeping, playing, correcting, eating, laughing, singing, and more.

And then what? Then we work. We read. We write. We build. We plant. We sweat. We wash. We make. We organize. We shop. We buy. We sell. We help. We teach. We heal. We sing some more.

You can’t fight a culture war without a culture to fight with, and you cannot build a culture without worship at its center. The only question is what will the object of our worship be? What will orient all that we do? We are building households that make people who will live forever. And those people were made to worship the Triune God. So we worship, build, and plant; we feast and we laugh until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.          

Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash

Times of Devastation or Refreshing?

Thoughts on 9-11

Today marks the 19th Anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked midair by 19 al-qaeda terrorists, masterminded by Osama Bin Laden. Two the planes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, causing the 110-story towers to collapse over the following hour and 42 minutes, causing the collapse of the rest of the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower. A third plane crashed into the Pentegon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane was intitially flown toward Washington, DC, but crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers heroically fought back against the hijackers. 

The attacks resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, over 6,000 injured, and 10 billion dollars in infrastructure and property damage. 9-11 is the considered the deadliest terrorist attack in recorded history, and the single deadliest for firefighters and law enforcement officers in American history, with 343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers killed. 

The attackers who planned and executed these attacks were wicked men, and all judicious efforts to bring them to justice were right and proper. And our remembrance of those who lost their lives as well as our honor of those brave and courageous men and women who gave their lives to save others is good and thoroughly Christian. And yet, we should not pass this moment without also noting that all of that can be true and I believe is true, and at the same time, God used those attacks to strike America. Not only did Osama Bin Laden strike America, but God struck America. 

This motif is found throughout the Bible, perhaps most famously in Isaiah where God uses the rod of foreign nations to strike Israel for their idolatries and evil, and God can do that and still hold the foreign nation to account for their violence and bloodshed (cf. Is. 10). 

But here we are 19 years later, and we still have not learned the lesson. We have still not repented of our sins. In the aftermath of 9-11, President George W. Bush attended a blasphemous, multi-cultural worship service in the National Cathedral, where the Lord Jesus was named alongside all of the gods of the nations. There were rabbis and Roman Catholics and Muslim Imams and more. It was a smorgasboard of idolatry, and it represented our disease and our hard-heartedness well. 

But the disease of idolatry can never be contained. If you do not destroy your idols, your idols will destroy you. And so here we are in 2020 being eroded from the inside by our idolatries, by our fears. Our idols of health and fitness: struck. Our idols of financial and economic security: struck. Our trust in horses and chariots to save us: struck. Our trust in government officials: struck. And now California and Oregon and Washington are up in flames for their mismanagement of God’s creation, for their arrogant hubris in rejecting the sources of energy He has provided, and believing the lies of climate change and environmentalism. 

If God wanted our attention, it could not really be more clear. He has lit up the sky bright orange. God is striking America. God is striking us everywhere and in every way, and He will not stop striking us until we repent. Until we humble ourselves and confess our sins to our parents, to our children, to our spouses, and cry out to Him to save us. You cannot live in God’s world and defy Him. You cannot live in God’s world and carry on without His blessing. Jesus died and rose again, and now God is calling all men everywhere to repent and turn to Him, so that times of refreshing may come. But if we do not repent, no times of refreshing will come. There will only be times of frustration, times of tyranny, times of confusion, times of pillaging, and times of smoking haze and devastation. But Jesus is alive and He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and He must reign until all of His enemies have become His footstool. 

[The audio for this was included in today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief.]

Photo by Kirby Kizuki on Unsplash