Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 45

Why the World Hates Us

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (Jn. 15:18-19).

Why does the world hate us? Because Jesus chose us out of the world – therefore the world hates us. And what did Christ choose us for?

Romans 8 says: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” 

So the world hates Christians because Jesus chose them to be conformed to His image, and He does that by justifying them and glorifying them. The world hates the righteousness of Jesus. The world hates His goodness and glory. And when God justifies a sinner, He declares that sinner righteous and perfect in His sight. And therefore, the world hates those whom God has justified. 

This table is a table for justified sinners. It is not for religious people. It is not for those who think they are somehow good enough. And all of this is related to how you will handle the hatred of the world. 

If you come here like the pharisee in the parable, saying that you have tithed and fasted, that you have voted correctly or posted the right hashtag or read the right book, you are treating this as some kind of reward, and you are trying to justify yourself. And all the slanders and mockery will matter to you. You can be steered and manipulated. 

But if you come as the publican, beating your chest and crying out for mercy, knowing that your only hope is Christ, you are coming justified. You are coming with no righteousness of your own. And this bread and wine is for you. These are emblems of God’s mercy, the righteousness of Christ for you. And if Christ is your righteousness, then the hatred and lies of the world are meaningless to you. Who cares what they think? All we have is Christ, and Christ is all we need. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by John Bussell on Unsplash

Titanic at the Bottom of the Atlantic

Introduction
It seems that some people reading my recent 4th of July masking article may have misunderstood. Maybe there are other people out there saying that this is the tip of the iceberg, the top of a slippery slope, e.g. if they can tell us to put face masks on, what new tyranny will they think up next? 

But that is not what I’m saying at all. It is not what I wrote, and it’s not what I think. I don’t think face mask mandates are a slippery slope. I would say that we are already at the bottom of the slippery slope. We fell down that slope like a golden retriever on roller skates. We fell like Humpty Dumpty and had a great fall. We are at the very bottom, buried beneath six tons of mudslide and the bees are doing their business in the third generation of flowers above us. We’ve been there for a minute. 

We’re not the Titanic getting perilously close to the iceberg. We’re not even the Titanic recently breached, taking on torrents of water in arctic temperatures. No, I’d say we’re the Titanic broken in pieces along the bottom of the Atlantic with barnacles all over it. We’re rusted and rotting, covered in seaweed and slime, the familiar haunt of several generations of darting and unsuspecting clown fish. And this latest face mask order is just another large, orange sea anemone blossoming on the starboard hull. 

One friend seemed to think I was comparing face masks to something like taxation without representation. But man, that ship sailed decades ago, maybe over a century ago and then it hit an iceberg and sunk and spread its wreckage for a mile or so on the ocean floor. Did I mention the fact that America is like the Titanic on the ocean floor? 

Do I think baseless face mask orders are tyranny? Absolutely. Do I think this is the beginning of Statist tyranny and overreach? Do I think we have been sailing merrily along, enjoying the cool, clean air of freedom and liberty and virtue, and now comes the greatest dark threat of ye modern day – the great mask conspiracy? As that one fellow said one time: Hardy har har.

A Short History of Liberty’s Demise
Imagine a corpse in a box six feet under. Imagine it rotting with worms wiggling through the empty eye sockets and rats chewing into the dusty bowels. Imagine the foul stench. Imagine the filth. America is a fat blistering tick on the back of one of the mangiest rats gnawing on the empty rib cage where the heart used to be. And the corpse is Lady Liberty. 

Taxation without representation? We crossed that threshold when Congress, duly elected by free Americans overturned presidential vetoes in the late 19th century, running roughshod over the Constitution’s explicit prohibitions of spending Federal monies on pet State projects. Yes, I know that strictly speaking those were our representatives passing that misuse of taxes, and the 16th Amendment would come later. But my point is not a strict parallel as much as it is an example of a place where freedom loving Americans might have really had a slippery slope argument and some enterprising journalist might have raised the specter of icebergs and their tips being far smaller than the rest of their deadly submerged bodies. But that was, as they say, a long, long time ago.

Or what about the 1942 Supreme Court case Wickard v. Filburn where it was decided that it was illegal for a farmer to feed his own wheat – wheat that he grew on his own property – it was illegal for him to feed that wheat to his own farm animals? Why, you ask? Why would a “free” nation like ours make such a wicked ruling? The argument was that since the constitution allows the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce and since the New Deal was regulating supply and demand of wheat via subsidies, our nation’s highest court decided that allowing one farmer to grow his own wheat and feed it to his own cows would mean more supply and less demand on the open market and if hundreds or thousands of farmers did something like that it would completely throw into chaos the tyranny, er, I mean the harmony created by Big Brother, er, I mean, El Presidente Roosevelt. You want a slippery slope? That might have already been over the edge. 

But perhaps the easiest atrocity to point to is the bloodbath decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, claiming to overturn abortion bans in most states. And the greatest atrocity was not the decision itself, although it was evil and atrocious. No, the greatest atrocity was the complicity of the states and the people, particularly in those 30 or so states that had laws on the books protecting their own children. They just rolled over and took it. Looking back, we might say that’s when we should have known that Lady Liberty had slipped into a coma or maybe she’d been dead for a few years or decades before that. The highest court in the land mandates child murder, and the states all shrugged and nodded? The states led by many of the same men who fought in World War 2 just laid down and pretended there was nothing to be done? 

Now, some 65 million dead babies later, we are not nearing the edge of some cliff of tyranny. We plunged off that cliff. It’s not that we could become like China. We are a Red China, a Soviet Russia, a Nazi Germany – our chains and rations and bribes are far more cleverly hidden, largely covered over with wealth and free time. There certainly have been valiant attempts at push back before and there have always been strong pockets of old school Christian virtue in places, which certainly has been a corrosion deterrent in small ghettoes of the culture. But make no mistake, we have gulags and gas chambers and child sacrifice. We have abominations and detestable practices. And unless we repent, Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, even Russia and China could rise up at the judgment and condemn us. 

What Do the Faithful Do?
So the question becomes: what do the faithful do in this moment? On the one hand, let me grant that it can seem like libertarian bluster to suddenly say, I won’t wear your stupid mask. This is the spirit of you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do and autonomy and I say, to Hell with that. Let me also grant that there is plenty of libertarian bluster to go around in our land and many even in the Reformed churches do not know what spirit they are of. But by God’s grace, I trust that is not my spirit or the spirit of my church. 

My elders drafted and approved the following principles back in April for helping to guide us in making church decisions through the quarantine days:

The elders of Christ Church affirm the following. Be it resolved

• That no earthly government at any level or in any sphere (federal, state, local, familial, or ecclesiastical) has the authority to forbid all corporate worship of the triune creator God across the board;

• That God has given the keys of the kingdom to the church and therefore decisions to meet or not meet for worship properly and ordinarily belong to the elders of the church;

• That God has granted civil magistrates true authority concerning things around the gathered worship of the saints (circa sacra). This true authority of magistrates around worship includes the protection of life in real emergencies (e.g. fire, active shooter, quarantine of the sick in time of plague) which may temporarily interrupt corporate worship;

• That when submitting to the requests of a magistrate not to meet, the elders of the church do not relinquish their jurisdiction or responsibility in sacris but rather both church and civil authorities retain their respective jurisdictions under God and the relevant laws of the land;

• That there are times when the elders’ authority in sacris and the magistrate’s authority circa sacra will genuinely overlap, and in such times of tension, all parties are responsible to resolve the tension according to the law of Christ;

• That any earthly authority is capable of abusing their legitimate authority to such an extent that other governments may approve or direct their people to disregard that abused authority; 

• That unless a magistrate’s order is explicitly addressed by Scripture directly, if Christ Church determines to meet for worship against the request or requirement of a civil magistrate, no elder’s conscience will be bound by the decision of the majority, and the majority will uphold the right of the minority opinion to his conviction without prejudice.”

Related, but also helpful was a recent statement from Evangel Presbytery, which I commend in its entirety to you, but particularly this part: 

“As a general law of neutral applicability, a quarantine at times interferes incidentally with the worship of God. This incidental interference in itself does not necessarily exceed the civil sphere’s authority as long as it is understood to be temporary and localized, lasting no longer and extending no farther than the conditions that gave rise to it. 

Yet, through a protracted, extensive, and comprehensive quarantine whose sway over the lives of the people is nearly absolute, the civil sphere does exceed its authority. When a sphere exceeds its authority and acts ​ultra vires​, its acts are void. Even for acts that are void from the beginning or become void over time, familial and ecclesiastical spheres must approach the proper response thereto through prayer, wisdom, humility, and honor, if not exact obedience, to the civil sphere.”

Also related, would be a recent conversation we had about the face mask laws on CrossPolitic with fellow elder and President of New St. Andrews College, Dr. Ben Merkle, who reminded us that there is fundamental difference between revolution and reformation. We heartily affirm the latter and robustly denounce the former. And yet, sometimes, if you only take the snapshot, you could get the impression that it’s a distinction without a difference. You could take a snapshot of the French Revolution and the American War for Independence, and the snapshot could honestly look rather similar. Both included violence and dead bodies, for example. But they were conflicts so ideologically different that they really don’t deserve to even be mentioned in the same breath as anything alike. The War for Independence was thoroughly reformational, while the French Revolution was thoroughly revolutionary. And the fundamental difference is that the energy that drove the American war was a thoroughly constructive energy full of love for law and history and Christian culture, while the French Revolution was driven by pure rage and lust for blood and vengeance and chaos (ironically, all in the name of the high goddess Reason). 

Against Lawlessness & Rebellion
Now let me pull these two strains of thought together for you. We are a rotting, broken mass of a shipwreck at the bottom of the Atlantic, we are an engorged parasite on the back of a corpse scavenger, and I detest revolution and love reformation. I’m not a libertarian. I’m a classically conservative, Westminsterian “general equity of the law” theonomist, in the tradition of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. I believe in law and order, and I heartily affirm our duty to honor and submit to civil magistrates.

Now comes the Russian collusion hoax and sham impeachment of President Trump, then comes coronavirus careening in from China, bringing shut down orders, mass quarantines of the healthy, tales of bubonic plague catastrophe, followed by mass protests quickly turning into a violent frenzy of rioting, killing, burning, and looting – cheered on by many of the same influential leaders driving the COVID responses, now followed by many universal, useless mask mandates, while many hospitals remain as barren and empty as the moon. Now what?

Let it be utterly clear: I do not object to civil leaders actually protecting the public from dangerous diseases. I do believe our health codes have been grotesquely obese for many decades, but there is a principle of true biblical justice hidden under that wreckage somewhere. In a true bubonic plague, quarantining the sick and clearly infectious areas is a legitimate use of civil authority. This is why, despite our doubts and suspicions about the true nature of the “crisis” and our disagreements with a universal quarantine and identification of pastoral ministry and churches and Christian worship as “non-essential,” I and my church happily submitted to the shut down orders in the beginning. We did not hold in-person worship services for three weeks, and we resorted to drive-in services for another three weeks following. 

But in the months that have followed it has become clear that this is manifestly not a health crisis on a magnitude that merits the universal mandates and shut down orders. We recently jumped from 7 to 14 cases in my county and zero deaths, with maybe one or two hospitalizations. And this is what my mayor and city council called a “spike” in new cases, instigating a universal mask emergency order. Heh. What is this? What is this really? The mask mandate is the requirement for God-fearing, law abiding citizens to join the revolution. It is a mandate that Christians wear the uniform of the mob. That is what I refuse to do and what I urge all thoughtful conservative Christians to do. Why? Because I’m not a revolutionary. I hate all lawlessness and rebellion. I hate the fact that by these decrees, everyone has effectively been turned into a lawbreaker. No one, not even the most ardent supporters of these mandates, keeps the mandate perfectly. Always six feet apart? Never speaking to someone who doesn’t live in your own household without a face covering? Never? 

Conclusion
It’s no accident that apart from true medical masks used in medical situations (which turns out has even been questioned by numerous studies), but the iconic use of face masks has been by criminals and bandits. The mob driving this political stunt is run by criminals and bandits. The same revolutionaries that hate the difference between men and women, who love the confusion of sodomy, the violence of abortion, and have weaponized racial difference in recent months to foment more chaos, would love nothing more than to add one more confusion to the pile of confusions. This is what revolution does. It tears down. It destroys. And it does this by confusing everything. It calls good evil and evil good. It calls sweet bitter and bitter it calls sweet. Up is down, down is up. Right is wrong, wrong is right. Hate is love, and love is hate. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys now? Here, let’s have everyone wear masks – and we don’t care what kind. Just cover your face. 

God hates confusion. God hates revolution and rebellion. And so do I, and therefore I hate the face mask mandates, and I urge the church to refuse to join that parade. In other words, I urge being cheerfully difficult (not violent or pugnacious), as an act of reformational resistance. And I urge this reformational resistance by grace through faith. What good does it do for a bunch of us to object to the last sea anemone taking up residence on our sunken wreck of a nation? What does it matter? Well, if you’re thinking in purely political terms, it’s a really foolish stand. Who cares about a piece of fabric. But if you’re willing to step back and look at it from a broader biblical stance, I think something else comes into focus. The issue is not looks or comfort. The issue is the image of God and the worship of the living God face to face. 

I’m not trying to keep us from the slippery slope. We fell off the slope over a century ago. This is an Ezekiel moment, and we’re preaching in a graveyard. I’m trying to plead with God to raise the dead. This face mask thing is like some poor guy’s clavicle sticking up through the ground. The only thing that will raise this corpse is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul made the seating arrangements at the potluck in Antioch a gospel issue, when we all know that seating arrangements need not be a gospel issue. Some could have accused Paul of just being overly sensitive or contentious. But Paul saw the play that was being run, and refused to play along and confronted Peter to his face. No doubt, as in Antioch, many have very innocently been carried along by good hearted, well meaning Christian leaders. I do not counsel rebellion against otherwise good and godly men who read this situation differently than I do or have determined to run a different play while being committed to the very same enemies. But I do say that we must not go along with the rebellious spirit of this age. And the rebellious spirit of the age loves to hid under the guise of prudence and submission and healthcare.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Those Old Handcuffs

We confess our sins at the beginning of worship every week, and there are important reasons for doing so. But we always want to make sure that our reasons are thoroughly evangelical – that is, we want our confession of sin to be firmly built on the gospel and not in any way a confusion of the gospel. 

For example, if you are a Christian, then you are not coming to Confession trying to get right with God. If you are a Christian, you are fundamentally right with God already. But Christians who are right with God do sin and need to make those sins right with God and one another. That may seem like a trivial difference, but it really isn’t. It’s like the difference between working something out with someone you hope to marry and working something out with someone you are already married to. In the first situation the whole relationship is potentially on the line; in the second, you are maintaining a relationship that already firmly exists. 

What we want to keep clear in our hearts and minds is the difference between justification and sanctification. At the beginning of the Christian life, a believer is justified completely and fully. This is God’s gracious act of wiping away the charges against us even though we were guilty. God takes all our sins away and buries them in the deepest sea. Sanctification is the process by which God is working out in us what He has already authoritatively declared to be true. 

This means that when you sin and you confess it on Tuesday or if the Lord brings something to your attention here on a Sunday morning, what you are doing is agreeing with God that this was one of those sins that He wiped clean and buried. We’re not trying to get God to wipe them clean or bury them. He already has. Christ already died and rose again for our sins, definitively forever. It is finished. In justification God set you free from all your sin, in sanctification, we’re removing all our old prison clothes and chains. Taking off those old handcuffs doesn’t make you free, it demonstrates that you agree with God that you really are free. 

Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash

Cheerfully Difficult

A Careening Introduction
To mask or not to mask. That is the question. 

C’mon people, it’s just a mask. Christians in other countries are being gunned down for gathering for worship. Can’t you “suffer” a little for the sake of the weak? 

The problem is we are being played. We are being gamed. Remember, the same people who breathlessly proclaimed that up to 2 million Americans could die from the “pandemic” with extreme measures taken, and we had to shut everything down this minute, are now the same ones telling us that wearing a sock around your face could save one life. 

Look, um, we’re not very impressed with your track record.

We listened to data models that were wildly – cosmically off base. We should have known. We listened to data models that make their living scamming the populace into enviro-frenzies. The same geniuses that say that the world is cooling, I mean warming, I mean shut up. It’s just bad and you have to stop driving cars, running air conditioners, and flushing your toilets and you have to use these reusable shopping bags that are infested with germs. Except not now. Stop using those bags. Those same geniuses are the ones we based these shut downs on. And they’re the same ones running the panic hysteria mobs demanding more rules. 

And remember: we didn’t just shut down nursing homes, isolating the sick and the vulnerable. No, we shut everything down. Everything “non-essential.” What does that mean? It meant everything except liquor stores. And abortion clinics. Because if we’re all going to die, we definitely want to die drunk and killing our babies. 

Some states were so fascist, they roped off sections of grocery stores to make sure no one bought something “non-essential” like seeds for growing vegetables because then someone might get the idea that they don’t need the government for everything. 

Walmarts and Costcos continued functioning at full capacity while churches were ordered closed. Pizza Hut could deliver to your doorstep, but technically, pastors were not allowed to visit parishioners, and certainly not celebrate small communion services with the faithful. That’s not essential, people. Remember, it was the US Surgeon General who told everyone back in February that there was no need for face masks, that they do not help much with Covid-19, and to leave them for health care professionals. And now you’re a heartless idiot if you don’t wear one. 

And The Numbers
But the numbers continue pouring in. The numbers are admittedly squishy, untrustworthy, and haphazard, but given the narrative being shoved down our throats, we can assume they are the worst numbers they can come up with. And what do we see? The numbers of new cases spiking and the numbers of new deaths plummeting. What does that mean? It means this disease is definitely not as deadly or lethal as many feared. It means we are building up a herd immunity, and the virus is losing its potency, like most coronaviruses do. Turns out the epidemiologists at Stanford and Johns Hopkins and Oxford have been right all along. But their research and papers were largely ignored by the media because non-sensational science doesn’t scare up the populace, and it isn’t as useful for tinpot dictators to use on their credulous citizenry.  

So who are the weak in this scenario exactly? The numbers tell us that people over 65 or 70 are the most vulnerable and those with other pre-existing conditions. They should be free to take extra precautions as they wish. But the most helpful way to protect the most vulnerable is for 10-20% or more of the young, healthy populace to just get this disease and move on. Upwards of 50% of healthy folks will barely notice they have it. This is part of what’s happening with the spike in new cases. A bunch of people are getting tested, a number of them are testing positive, and the hospitals are not being flooded. How could that be? It’s because COVID-19 isn’t a deadly killer for most healthy people. Herd immunity is what will protect our elderly and most vulnerable. 

Who Are the Weak?
But in actual fact, the largest group of weak people in this nation at this moment are those who want to preserve their freedom in Christ. And when we ask whether Christians should wear a mask or not, we must recognize that we are dealing with an area that theologians routinely refer to as “Christian liberty.” We’re talking about Christian freedom. The Bible does not require or prohibit face masks per se, and therefore, God requires Christians to use their freedom for good and for edification – for building up the saints, not as an occasion for the flesh. The real tricky thing is that the flesh comes at us in every direction. It comes through fear of death, fear of accusation, lust for approval, lust for peace, outrage over abuses, outrage over folly (or perceived folly), and the list keeps going. When we define good and edification, we need to define those terms biblically and not let the same Wahoo’s who told us that 2 million Americans would be dead if we took extreme action immediately – we shouldn’t let those same exegetes give us a Sunday School lesson on loving our neighbors or submission to authority. 

So a quick review: we live in a constitutional republic, not an empire, not a monarchy. Romans 13 means that the highest authorities in our land are constitutions – both at the federal and state levels. We have elected servants who take oaths to uphold those constitutions. And our constitutions were (and remain down to this day) self-consciously limitations to our civil magistrates. They are, for the theologians in our midst, regulative principle documents. They gave specific powers to government officials and apart from those specified powers, all other matters of power and freedom were retained by the people. 

All of this means that mayors and governors and congresses and supreme court justices are not allowed to just make up new laws that seem good to them. They may act to protect citizens in moments of true emergency. They are free to quarantine the actual sick and infected. But they are not free to make up emergencies, they are not free to treat the healthy as if they are sick and infected, and they are not free to make up stupid solutions for make believe problems. There is no pandemic emergency for young and healthy Americans. And random pieces of fabric do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of viruses. Regular fabric is to a virus what volley ball nets are to mosquitoes. And that means everybody is going around wearing something because it makes people feel better and does not a lick of good. Chances are also decent that these pieces of cloth actually encourage the spread of a lot more sickness and bacteria. Just watch everyone touching their masks everywhere they go. Think of that as a little Petri dish growing exotic colored mold fuzz. Now breathe deeply. Mmmmm.

Words Matter
In other words, our constitutional republic presupposes the fixed meaning of words. Lex is rex (“the law is king”) is the foundation of the Western Christian law tradition, and it means that particular words and what they mean is what Christians are committed to submitting to. We are committed to submitting to the written Word of God above all other words, and we are committed to submitting to the constitutions of our nation and states and cities, according to the meaning of the words written down. We are not committed to submitting to an infinite revisionism of definitions of words. Christians need not submit to some sophist who claims that freedom now means living in a refrigerator box or wearing gold stars pinned to your shirt. Likewise, words like “emergency” and “health crisis” cannot be bent around to apply to a fairly normal flu season or even a bad one. One mayor in Richmond, Virginia has ordered the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue for health and safety reasons. On that basis, mayors and governors might also remove churches and crosses and American flags because they cause psychological harm to the fragile egos of the rioters. Honoring our civil fathers means honoring what they set down, what they wrote, and what they meant by the words they wrote, which, incidentally, is why they need those statues down now.

Apart from legitimate science-based use of medical face masks in, you know, actual medical scenarios, the current random-piece-of-fabric-face-mask frenzy is nothing less than virtue signaling submission to the Statist gods. Matt Williams has called them Marxist Burqas, and that seems about right. They are symbols of submission to the high priests who just a few minutes ago were praising the looters burning down Target because of “systemic racism.” They were praising the antifa riots and protests mixing thousands of people in close quarters for their courage and virtue. By what standard? The standard is revolution and statism. The standard is shut up and submit. These are fickle and arbitrary gods. But make no mistake: the same dictates that arbitrarily consign some businesses as “essential” and others as “non-essential,” the same arbitrary dictates that praise the mobs pulling monuments down but condemn Christians for gathering for worship (and singing!) are the very same dictates currently ordering face burqas for the masses. This is not about science, it’s about solidarity. It’s about submission. It’s about keeping people in a tight, manipulatable mass. 

My Plan
Moscow’s mayor just ordered a seven day emergency mandatory servility badge here in our town. And chances are good the city council will extend his order. I have not worn one yet, and my goal is to avoid it as much as possible. My plan is to simply ignore the stupid decree, but if someone asks me to put one on, I plan to be cheerfully difficult. I will probably start with a simple “no thanks, I don’t believe in that,” but if they are somewhat insistent, I will let them know that I have a religious exemption. If they need to know more than that, I will explain that my Christian religion teaches me not to bow down to idols. If they still need more, the mayor’s order also made it clear that the masks are only required where social distancing is not possible. Of course I believe private businesses should be free to require certain things of customers. I want to love them toward resisting this tyrannical law, but if they are not interested in my encouragement, and they have something I need, I will happily comply. I’m free to wear a piece of useless fabric across my face, but I will do everything in my power to indicate that I don’t believe in that statist religion, nor am I afraid of COVID-19.

Conclusion: Challenges & Encouragement
All of this is a challenging moment to live in. The temptation for most Christians is to break in one of two directions simplistically: either toward revolutionary revolt or compliant apathy. But turns out faithful courage looks a lot more like being cheerfully difficult. The thing they are counting on is either belligerence or servility. But we need to be gracious and uncompliant. It’s certainly not necessarily a bad witness to get a citation and pay a fine, but I believe the tip of our spear, the point of our fiercest resistance is worship. If we are to practice straight forward civil disobedience it ought to be in obedience to God in worship. We have been patient with the virus scare and deferred to our magistrates for several months, but now that it is clear that the statists only approve of gatherings that are violent and anti-Christian, it is high time for Christians to gather peacefully for worship to protest the insanity. And if they try to interrupt us, or require us to put something over our mouths to muffle our praises, we should cheerfully refuse. And if you live in a state (ahem, California) that has explicitly prohibited singing in worship, you need to attend worship tomorrow and sing at the top of your lungs. If your church cancels worship or complies with that wicked decree, you need to find a new church. The state does not have the authority to make up fake emergencies to limit Christian worship. 

But there is encouragement in this moment. These ridiculous edicts are targeting Christians and Christian worship and Christian freedom. In many places, this targeting is not conscious, but there are strong currents driving this cultural storm: Marxist currents, Darwinian currents, secular Statist currents and whether the captains on the various ships know what that means or not, we do. Those currents are driven by hatred of God, hatred of His Christ, hatred of His creation, and hatred of His people and His freedom. All of this goes together. There is no true freedom apart from Christ. We have enjoyed great freedom in this country for so long because Christ has been honored, though imperfectly, in this land. Next to honoring God in worship, the next greatest command is to love our neighbors, and the first way we do that is by honoring our fathers and mothers, acknowledging how God has piled up blessing for us down through the centuries. It is no accident that the same storm is currently tearing down the ancient landmarks of our land. If you don’t think they will come for churches soon, you haven’t been paying attention. And besides, mobs are not thoughtful creatures. 

And here is the encouragement: we are nearly beyond all the B.S. The real conflict is nearly out in the open. And the real conflict is between Christ and every alternative. Will we worship Him and serve Him or will we keep dabbling with idols and false gods? It’s Christ or nothing. Christ or chaos. Do we want Christian freedom or statist solidarity? Only Christ died for our sins. Only Christ is risen from the dead to make all things new. The statist idols are all deaf, dumb, and blind. They have mandated worthless pieces of fabric be worn on your face. That is their current sacrament, but that feeling you’re getting isn’t Christian peace. It’s probably just a lack of oxygen and all those extra bacteria you’re sucking in. And you haven’t helped anyone really. But the water of baptism was given by God Himself. The bread and wine is the new covenant in the blood of Christ. The Spirit is real. The forgiveness of sins in Christ is real. 

So Happy 4th of July. Happy Independence Day. Raise your glasses high, sing loudly, grill good meat, shoot off illegal fireworks, and with uncovered faces let us honor our fathers and feast our King.

And tomorrow we worship. Tomorrow we fight. 

Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

We Rally Here

In S.C. Gwynne’s book Rebel Yell, a biography of Stonewall Jackson, he rehearses one of the infamous challenges of premodern warfare: communication on a field of battle. With tens or hundreds of thousands of men, particularly before radio communication was possible, many battles were fought with very little or no communication between Generals and field officers. Messages might be run by couriers, but couriers may be shot or intercepted. Plus, there was always changing facts on the ground. What may have seemed like a good strategy the day before may not work in the smoke and heat of battle. It was often when good men did not know what to do, that they were most courageous and effective by simply doing their duty. They simply followed orders as best as they could.   

We are various units and part of one battalion that has been assigned to occupy this city. There are other battalions in this city with the same assignment, and many thousands more around the world with similar orders for their communities. We are all on various front lines of the one great battle. And the lines are constantly changing in various respects. Life and death, marriage and parenting, worship and evangelism, missions and business ventures, hospitality and politics are all various ways we are engaged with the enemy. But you might occasionally be tempted to look up and wonder what dirty dishes and diapers have to do with the Kingdom of God. How do spread sheets or computer programing or this building project or sales pitch fit with the battle plan? You might look across the field and wonder whether you should be over there instead, or you might be worried that we’re about to be overrun and captured. 

So remember two things: First, our General is not at all limited by our limitations of knowledge and communication. Jesus is the Great General carrying out this war. He sits in heaven, and He has perfect reconnaissance of every enemy movement. He knows where they are and what they are planning, and most importantly, He knows that their defeat is certain. And He has put you exactly where He wants you today. He may have different orders for you down the road. But today your orders are to be courageous and do your duty. What are your orders? To gather here week after week and worship the King. Confess your sins and forgive one another quickly and gladly. Go to your work with joy, for your King, for your families, for the Kingdom. This bread and wine is our flag. We rally here, and proclaim our King until He comes. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash

Aching for Freedom & Cleansing

There are two things that the natural heart of every man, woman, and child wants. Our natural hearts want to be autonomous and clean. They want to be completely independent, and they want to be forgiven. One of these desires is insane, but in any case, these are mutually exclusive desires for sinful people.

Complete independence for a creature is impossible. Creatures are utterly dependent on their Creator. So the desire for autonomy is insane. You cannot stand on a skyscraper and then banish the sky scraper and pretend to be able to fly. You cannot disregard God’s law and summon up your own law out of thin air, as if that would help anything. And meanwhile, every act of defiance against God gnaws at the human heart to be made clean. 

And so here we are: same song, umpteenth verse. And both of these desires are at work all around us. I remember the good old days when you used to be able to go to a fast food joint without getting a Sunday School lecture before ordering a cheeseburger. My family was at Yellowstone recently, and the visitor’s guide included these helpful instructions: no pushing or shoving.

We are fast approaching a situation where every non (self-consciously) Christian establishment has turned into an altar to false gods. You must post slogans, don masks (regardless of health or age), stand here and cross yourself three times and do your penance as you come through the door in great shows of false piety. But do not miss what they are promising: they are promising autonomy and cleansing. Of course, they do not say autonomy, they say “freedom,” but it is quickly becoming apparent that by “freedom” what they actually mean is slavery. And by “clean” they mean more guilt. 

The gospel comes to this world with the same bracing good news it has always brought. And that is the good news that you are not God. You did not make yourself. You are a creature, a fallen, rebellious creature. There is no way to get clean apart from the blood of Jesus Christ. And you cannot come to the blood unless you bow your neck. But the good news is that there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, and all who plunge beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Those who bow their necks really do get clean, and those who are made clean, really are set free. 

Photo by John Wilson on Unsplash

What is Possible

Introduction
As I talk to Christians around the country and from time to time visit them, the thing that often comes to mind is that I don’t think we know what is possible. Far too many Christians settle for far too little. And I say “we” on purpose because I will use some of the things I have been blessed to learn and enjoy as examples, but I don’t mean them by any stretch of imagination as *the* standards or highwater marks of Christian culture. I merely mean them as examples – examples to follow, examples to imitate. 

Good Compared to What?
What do I mean? I mean that Christians – all of us – have been sitting in a cultural stew pot with the heat slowly turning up and many have simply gotten used to it. Christians get used to bickering in families and between spouses. Christians get used to tacky worship music and preaching void of substance and authority. Christians get used to low standards in dress and speech and education. Christians get used to injustice, tyranny, and the nanny state. We see the cesspool of pagan culture around us and imagine that since we’re against all that (whatever all that is exactly), we must be holding the line. We don’t send our kids to government schools, so our families must be better than they would be. We’re still married, and despite all the squabbling, this must be a Christian marriage. We eat dinner together regularly, so this must be a Christian family. We go to a church that says it’s conservative and Bible-believing and well, it must be pretty good – the pastor does mention that abortion is wrong every once in a while. And speaking of which, we vote for pro-life and conservative politicians (but for some reason nothing ever really changes). 

But this is defining “good” only compared to evil. But “good” should really be compared to thriving. What does a thriving Christian family look like? What does a thriving Christian school look like? What does a thriving Christian church and community look like? Please note that I did not say “perfect.” Although, to be quite honest I could have said “perfect,” since that’s what Jesus says we are to strive for. He says that we are to be “perfect” as our Father in heaven is “perfect” (Mt. 5:48). And in the Greek, it means “perfect.” Jesus has high standards for His disciples. Therefore, we should have high standards for ourselves and our families. We will always have sins to confess and repent of until our dying day, but there are paths of faithfulness that really do make progress in sanctification, and there are other paths that wander in circles or down into the dark. 

Real Thriving Fruit
On the one hand, there are some who are quick to leap at visions of utopia. And that’s not what I’m talking about at all. Every Christian family, church, and community will still be full of sinners, and sinners will always be sinning in some ways. But there really is a difference between good fruit and poor fruit. And Jesus says that it is faithful to notice (Mt. 7:17-19). Wisdom is justified by her children (Lk. 7:35). And wisdom notices the fruit of obedient and joyful children, obedient and joyful worship, obedient and joyful marriages and communities. Elders and their marriages and kids should be shining examples to the community. But if you’re constantly making excuses for them – they’re just human like the rest of us – that ain’t it. 

In other words, it is easy to settle for low standards when you’re struggling just to keep your head above the cesspool waves. But why not get out of that toxic pool entirely? What is that pool? It’s the pool of worldly expectations, worldly standards, worldly coolness, worldly success. Get out. You’re a Christian. Your standard is the Bible and nothing else. Now start small. Confess your own sins first, to God, to your spouse, your children, and your parents. Which sins? All the sins you know about, the sins you commit every day, the fussing, the bickering, the lying, the spinning, the biting, the disrespect, as well as all the sins that eat at you from the past, the sins from your childhood and college days, the ones you’ve tried to stuff down into your gut. Get clean. Get completely clean. Get back into fellowship. Get back into joy. Make that the norm. And this really is the rock bottom, foundational point about what is possible. This really is possible. It is possible to be completely clean, forgiven, full of joy, and in fellowship with God and your neighbor.

This isn’t just a momentary thing either. It’s possible to maintain that joy and fellowship. Every time you sin, quickly confess it and get back into joyful fellowship. If joy is a struggle, especially if joy is a struggle, confess your sins and forgive those who have sinned against you. Confess your sins to God directly and anyone you sinned against. John wrote what he did so that our joy might be full and that we might have fellowship with the Father and the Son and one another (1 John 1). 

Biblical Standards
Next, strive to make your standards according to God’s Word and as much as possible, nothing else. What does God require of husbands and wives? Who cares what your extended family thinks. Submit to God’s word cheerfully. What does the Bible require of parents and children? Who cares what your playdate friends think. Submit to that gladly. What does the Bible say a church is supposed to be like? Elders? Deacons? Worship? Preaching? Pursue that. And of course all of that means that you need to be reading your Bible voraciously. Over and over. More than anything else. And not just reading it, eyes glazed over; reading it hungry, reading it praying that God would show you light for your life. And then apply it. 

What many of us have found over many years is that what is possible is far beyond what you imagined and all of it is grace. We pray and read the Bible and confess our sins and worship and pursue excellence, and the fruit that emerges doesn’t add up at all. It’s way more than we thought. And that’s how we know it’s all God’s blessing. But what we’ve found is that God still loves us pursuing His blessing. Understanding that it’s all grace and all blessing doesn’t make the blessing a random happenstance, as if God is up in heaven flinging blessings around haphazardly. And understanding that it’s all grace and all blessing doesn’t make us apathetic or lower our standards either. We raise our standards, we wrestle with God, we plead with God, we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but over and over and over, we find that it is God who is at work within us, willing and doing according to His good pleasure – and it turns out that is far beyond what we imagined was possible. 

Joyful Family
So what do I mean practically? I mean that people routinely underestimate the kind of joy a family can be. I don’t mean that you occasionally have fun family times and the rest of the time you’re just trudging along between tiffs and barking. I mean that the norm can be one great day after another, like best friends all day every day, getting along, enjoying one another. Sure, there’s the occasional slip or mistake, but just like a spill, it’s quickly wiped up and joy is restored. Marriage can be like that; parenting can be like that. I have two and half teenagers (really seems like three), and my wife and I are having a blast. They are thoughtful, creative, funny, and an absolute blast to be around.

Rigorous Education
Practically, I also mean that education and schooling can be far beyond what you might imagine. Kids used to go to Oxford and Harvard at 16, and while I’m not advocating that (at all), I’m just saying kids are far more capable than we give them credit for. They can learn Latin and advanced mathematics and logic and courtesy and courage and rhetoric and poetry and music. And this can be accomplished for normal kids, normal Christian families on a normal budget. Of course this means that an entire community must band together. A community must have a shared vision of a classical and Christian education, built on basic Christian principles, and leadership committed to hating all prep school pretension, among other things. So read a few books on classical Christian education. Read about a vision that was articulated 40 years ago that has been successfully implemented over two generations. And for my money, I’d suggest starting here and here. The spiritual, evangelistic, economic, and political impact of this kind of education is still blowing up.

Robust Worship
Practically, and speaking of music, I also mean worship that is reverent and joyful, historic and lively, biblical and simple. I mean singing metrical hymns and psalms, designed for congregations and families, easy enough to sing in your home around a dinner table and majestic enough to lift up to the Triune God on the Lord’s Day. These historic hymns (and modern hymns written like them) are not sappy and effeminate, they are militant and stately, but they are written for common people, normal people who with some practice can learn the parts as well. I live in a community that has been working at this for 25-30 years and together with robust music education programs for children, have a growing repertoire of hymns and psalms that are biblically and musically robust.

It is simply a false dilemma to say that you must choose between tradition and life. The common assumption is that if you sing a traditional hymn it’s just an artifact and maybe a nice thing to do for the older folks, but if you really want to “worship” for the modern man you must use a modern chorus and have guitars and drums. Heh. I used to think that, but I was wrong. So wrong. Imagine 500 saints belting out a psalm set to a fuguing tune, voices weaving in and out in harmony. Well, maybe that’s hard to imagine, but let me tell you it’s glorious, and noble as an army full of banners streaming in the wind. 

Imagine simple, biblical worship, full of scripture: a call to worship, a confession of sin, readings of Scripture, a straightforward message explaining what the Bible means and how it applies to every area of life, a celebration of the Lord’s Supper with bread and real wine (because that’s what Jesus said to do), and a final doxology and a benediction for the week. 

Conclusion
It looks like a number of people are seriously considering moving – leaving California, Washington, maybe New York or Chicago, and there can be many good reasons for leaving. Let me also encourage you to look for communities where people are not merely coping, not merely trying to keep their heads above water, not merely settling for not-as-bad-as-the-pagans. Look for churches full of families that are actually thriving. And in order to know that you really have to ask about or meet the grandchildren. Do they love the Lord? Are they full of fruitfulness in Christ? Do they still love what their parents and grandparents love? Are they standing on the shoulders of their fathers – improving what they were given with deep gratitude? Then settle down there with them. And of course you’re most welcome to visit us out in Idaho. God has been good to us, and there’s plenty more blessing where all of this came from. 

Christ Our Peace

[Noted: the audio/video of this message is available here.]

Eph. 2:11-18

Introduction
There is no peace apart from Christ. There is no familial peace, marital peace, political peace, or any kind of social peace apart from Christ. All other claims to peace are at best cold war scenarios. All demonstrations, protests, riots, political solutions, resolutions, statements, movements, symbols are utterly powerless to bring peace apart from Christ. This is because apart from Christ, there is guilt, enmity, resentment, fear, and hopelessness. To say that Christ is the only way to the Father is to say that Christ is the only way to peace in this world. You cannot say that Christ is the only way to God and then pretend that economics or psychology or politics or peace circles can reconcile the enmity of people.

Summary of the Text: Paul writes the Ephesians and reminds them that they were Gentiles and outside the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, without hope and without God (Eph. 2:11-12). It was Christ who brought the Gentiles near to God (Eph. 2:13). And this is because Christ is our peace (Eph. 2:14). He demonstrated that He is our peace by making Jews and Gentiles one, and He did that by breaking down the middle wall of division between the two halves of the ancient human race (Eph. 2:14). He broke that wall down by abolishing in His flesh the enmity that existed between them (Eph. 2:15). That enmity existed because of the law of commandments contained in ordinances, which included both moral and ceremonial laws – moral laws exposing the sin and guilt of both Jew and Gentile and ceremonial laws drawing lines of ethnic distinction between Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:15). Jesus abolished that enmity in His flesh on the cross (Eph. 2:16). There is only one way for the human race to be united as one because Jesus only has one body, and all the enmity and animosity of the human race was laid on Him in the cross and put to death there (Eph. 2:16). When Christ died the enmity died. When this gospel is preached, Jesus Himself is preaching peace to Jews and Gentiles, those who are far away and those who are near (Eph. 2:17). This peace is thoroughly Trinitarian; without the Trinity, you cannot have peace. The only path to this peace is through Jesus, by one Spirit, to the Father (Eph. 2:18).

The Way of Peace
Christians commonly quote John 14:6. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father, except through me.” But what many Christians have falsely assumed is that the “way” Jesus is talking about is merely or only the way to heaven. While it is absolutely true that no one goes to heaven apart from Christ, what Jesus says is that no one comes to the Father, except through Him. We do go to Father when we go to heaven, but we also go to Father for all that we need (Mt. 7:11). If we must ask the Father for food and clothing, how much more so must we ask the Father for healing and reconciliation? Jesus also taught us to ask the Father for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Mt. 6:10). If we confess that His is the kingdom and the glory and the power, then we are confessing that only He has the power to bring peace, and when peace is accomplished it will be to His glory alone. No one will credit the riots or the protests or the demonstrations. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

God made the world in such a way that all human beings are related to one another in and through their relationship to God. You cannot relate to another human or group of human beings in a way that is unrelated to the God who made them, in whom they live and move and have their being (Acts 17:28). Imagine a cosmic 3-D pyramid (or cone if you prefer) with God at the very top. The only way for two or more human beings in this world to move closer together is for them to move closer to God. There is no other way. It is utterly impossible and futile to try anything else. The only way to move closer to another person is to move closer to the Father, and the only way to move closer to the Father is through Christ and by His Spirit. Apart from Christ you cannot have peace, and you cannot make peace. In our current cultural-political moment, all promises of peace are inherently competing alternatives to Christ: black lives matter, metoo, Trumpism, globalism, nationalism, antifa, socialism, libertarianism, anarchism, conservatism, whatever.

Do not misunderstand: some of these offered solutions are better or worse temporarily, some are tactically better or worse momentarily. Some will buy Christians more time than others. But make no mistake: Anything without Christ crucified at the center is a competing gospel, a competing religion. And it cannot bring peace. It only rearranges the animosity. This is because the further you get from Christ, the further you get from other people. If you move away from Christ, you are by definition moving further away from other people. The further you move away from Christ who alone heals animosity and enmity, the more you will have of it. To say that you might move closer to other people apart from Christ is to say that you have some other solution to the enmity. You are claiming another cross, another Christ, another gospel. But there is no other Christ. There is no other name under heaven whereby men may be saved.

All of this is why C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, pictured Hell as people constantly quarrelling and fighting and moving farther and farther apart, thousands and millions of light years away from one another, toward an utter and absolute isolation. The only way back toward other people is back toward Christ. Even in situations where the other(s) don’t seem interested in making peace, the only way toward that peace is toward the Father, through the Son, by His one Spirit. If you are drawing near to the Father in Christ, then you are getting as near as possible to anyone you might be at odds with.

Keeping & Making Peace
The Bible teaches that there is a fundamental difference between keeping peace and making peace. And the Bible teaches that you cannot make peace unless God has first given the gift of His peace which Christians then keep. This is why a little later Paul urges the Ephesians to “keep” the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3). Christian peace making is essentially receiving the gift of God’s peace and applying it to our lives. But you cannot apply what you don’t have. You cannot give what you have not first received. Fallen, sinful man cannot make peace. If fallen, sinful man could make peace, then we don’t need Christ. If we could reconcile warring nations, ethnic strife, family feuds, cold war marriages, or the deep wounds of separated parents and children, then we don’t need Christ. But the message of the Bible is that man cannot make peace. We cannot make peace. We are hopelessly hateful and malicious and resentful and defensive and bitter. This is why Christ came. He came to establish peace on earth, and so that is what the angels sang to the shepherds when Christ was born. Christ was born for this.

So there is only one way to peace and that is by believing and receiving the peace that Jesus accomplished on the Cross, two thousand years ago. This is the peace that just is. It was accomplished, and it is finished. And there’s nothing you can add to it. There is nothing we can do to help that peace. That is clearly taught here in our text: He abolished in His flesh the enmity between God and man, man and man (2:15). Why? So that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity (2:16). Who is the subject of the sentence? God is. Jesus is the subject. He is the actor. We do not make this peace. God makes it, and God already made it. How did it make peace? Christ abolished the enmity. He destroyed it. He put it to death. Therefore, He has already reconciled the raging enmities of men. He has already reconciled us in one body to God. The enmity died and was completely finished when Jesus cried it is finished and died. The enmity is dead. 

This is why all human attempts to destroy enmity are worthless and useless and worse than useless. The only Christian path to peace begins with the announcement that the enmity and animosity is already dead. It died on the cross with Christ and was buried with Him, and when Christ rose from the dead, it was gone. The enmity did not come back from the dead. Only Christ came back, and He came back saying, “Peace be with you.” He kept saying peace, peace. Why? Because the enmity was gone, because the enmity is dead. And that message must be believed and received in order for there to be peace anywhere in this world. If you don’t believe that message, if you won’t receive that message, you are insisting on carrying a maggot infested body of enmity around with you. It’s still dead. Christ really did kill it, but no wonder no really likes being around you. 

So, if we are in Christ, then we are already unified and we already have peace with God and one another. This is why you can meet believers in every place in the world and feel like you’re meeting family, because you are. Christ is our peace. We simply labor to keep that unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But this is also why if you are not in Christ or if the one you are laboring to be at peace with is not in Christ, you cannot be at peace. There can be no true peace between light and darkness, between the righteous and the unrighteous, between Christ and Belial. What agreement does God have with Baal? So all the demonstrations, riots, and political plays are nothing if the peace of Christ is not at their center. At best, they are merely rearranging the enmity.  

The Obvious Question & the Only Answer
The obvious question after all of this is: so why are there riots and violence in our streets? Why is there so much animosity in our land, so much division in the church, so much brokenness in our families? If Christ accomplished our peace and the enmity is dead, why are we so divided? But you know the answer: because we have turned away from Christ. The further you move away from Christ, the further you get from those around you. There is no other way to draw near. Christ is our peace. Christ is the only way to draw near to God, and therefore, He is the only way to drawn near to anyone who bears God’s image. There is no peace apart from Christ. 

This current cultural moment is the death-throws of Darwinian relativism. The riots and angry demonstrations are merely large collections of people hauling around dead bodies of enmity and animosity, bitterness, guilt, and fear. And for many, they know the whole thing smells like death. And this is why it is getting so violent. Despair and guilt and fear mix together to make a terrible social cocktail. But the message of the cross is for this moment. Christ is our peace. He abolished the enmity in His flesh. He has made peace in His body. The enmity is dead.  

It is this proclamation that God has determined to use to bring about peace in this world. When this gospel is preached, Christ-crucified is presented to the world. He is lifted up as the death of all enmity. And just like when Moses lifted up the bronze serpent pierced on a stake for the healing of Israel, preachers of this gospel lift up Christ bearing our enmity in His body pierced on the cross. Just like Israel, we are snake-bit. The problems we have are not fundamentally political, economic, social, or ethnic. The problem we have is spiritual. We are snake bit, and we are dying. There is only one way out of this mess, and it is by looking to Christ our Peace. He was struck for our enmity. He was crushed for our animosity. He became our serpent-sickness and was crushed so that it would die. Christ is our peace. He is our only peace. In Him all enmity is dead. It is finished. 

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash

The Politics of Forgiven Sin

Mic. 7:1-9, 18-20

Introduction
What do Christians do when the world around them seems to be coming apart? We wait on God, our salvation, and we think and live in light of His promises. And in particular, we think and live in light of His promises to forgive our sins and the sins of the world.   

The prophet Micah ministered in the southern kingdom of Judah towards the end of the 8thCentury B.C. He ministered during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Mic. 1:1) when the northern kingdom of Israel/Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC (2 Kings 17). In other words, Micah was watching the disintegration of his nation. Despite the deep darkness in his day, his prophecy is full of light and hope for us.  

The Text: “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net… He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea…” (Mic. 1-9, 18-20)

Summary of the Text: Our passage opens with Micah’s cry of woe. The previous chapter has just finished God’s declaration of severe judgment (6:10-16), and here Micah cries out for the sin of his people (7:1). All the good men are gone, and everyone hunts one another with nets and takes bribes (7:2-3). The best men are briars and thorn hedges, and no one can trust anyone, not even friends, spouses, or family (7:4-6). But Micah’s response is a striking confidence: “Therefore, I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me” (7:7). Micah warns his enemy not to rejoice when he falls because he will surely rise, and even in the darkness God will be his light (7:8). Micah acknowledges that there will be consequences for his personal sin, but God will plead for him and deliver him and bring him back out into the light (7:9). Micah goes on to describe how God will judge the nations and care for his people through all the turmoil (7:10-17). The prophet closes asking who is like our God, and it’s striking that he is particularly astonished by His mercy, the way He pardons sin and passes by the transgression of His people (7:18). Despite all the turmoil, Micah is sure that God will turn again and have compassion on His people; He will defeat our sin and cast it into the depths of the sea (7:19). This is certain because God promised this mercy to Abraham (7:20).

Is There A God?
Is Micah’s response to the evil of his day reasonable? Is it reasonable and rational to respond to such pervasive corruption by saying you will wait on God (Mic. 7:7)? The answer to these questions illustrates why the existence of God really is a watershed issue. If there is no God, then eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. If there is no God, then morality is just a construct, and might makes right. Everything is survival of the fittest, grab what you can get. And morals are just temporary, utilitarian tactics for the cowardly. If there is such a thing as justice, then there must of necessity be a standard of justice. And for it to be real justice, that standard must be fixed from day to day, from generation to generation, and apply to everyone the same. Whenever anyone says something is “wrong,” they are making a claim to morality. This is why we must be constantly asking a most crucial question: By what standard? Why? You cannot claim that something is good, right, wrong, evil, or unjust if you have banished all absolute standards. If there is a God, there is a fixed standard. If not, to Hell with morality.

The Real Problem
The reason we don’t want a standard, an eternal, fixed law is because every man knows that the same law that will condemn evil out there in the world will also ultimately point its sharp end back at us. “Now we know that what things soever the law saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19). This is what Micah acknowledges having rehearsed the wickedness of his nation: “I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me” (7:9). So what will it be? Do we want justice or not? 

The Politics of the Accuser
The city of man functions on the power of accusation. The best peace and community man can muster on his own is the “fellowship” of the standoff. We take hostages in the form of dirt on one another, and have guns pointed at one another with silent agreements (or not so silent) not to fire, if the others won’t. This happens in families, marriages, businesses, and nations. But this isn’t peace, this isn’t fellowship, this is a cold war, with every move scrutinized and studied. But the power of accusation is guilt and fear. People know they are guilty, they know they have dirt, and they are paralyzed by the fear of exposure, blame, and shame, so they play along. Satan is the Accuser, and this is the power he uses over the guilty (Heb. 2:14-15).

Conclusion
This is why when Jesus began His healing ministry He identified the deeper, more fundamental problem as sin. When the men let down their paralyzed friend through the roof, the first thing Jesus said was, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk. 2:5, Lk. 5:20), which may have seemed a bit anticlimactic at first. And when Jesus finally did heal the man, it was to prove that He had the authority to forgive sins (Mk. 2:10-11, Lk. 5:24). To the extent that individuals, families, and nations are paralyzed with fear, violence, hatred, the answer is the same. They need their sins forgiven. If our sins are forgiven then the Satanic hostage game of accusation is over. 

And what is the one thing our God is known for? Despite all the cries of misogyny and injustice and cruelty, everyone knows that our God is known for His mercy. From the beginning, He has covered the sins of people with grace. He pardons iniquity; He passes by our transgressions. He delights in mercy. So this is the message that we need to hear, the message proclaimed to our families and neighbors and nation: Jesus Christ the Righteous is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 Jn. 2:1-2). 

Notice that John says that this message is given so that we might not sin. We are often afraid that if people are forgiven, they will just go on sinning. But the Bible says it’s just the opposite: guilt is what makes people sin, not forgiveness. Therefore, the thing that sinners need to hear in order to stop sinning is the verdict: not guilty. Jesus has defeated our sins, trampling them underfoot, by the blood of His cross, and they have been cast to the bottom of the sea (Mic. 7:19). There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… This is the only path to peace and justice in our lives or in our land. This is our light even when we sit in darkness, and it is our sure hope that the Lord will bring us out into the light. No gimmicks. No more games. Just forgiveness. And real peace.

Photo by Aryan Singh on Unsplash

Blessed Trouble

Christianity is not a religion of safety or precautions. We serve the God who made this place, and even when it was perfect, it was dangerous. There was a tree in the middle of the garden that was off limits, and pretty soon there was a talking dragon. God made even the perfect world dangerous. After Adam and Eve sinned, it got even more dangerous, with sin, and thorns, and pain, and enmity, and death. And it pleased God for His people to learn to live by faith in a dangerous world. 

Everyone will face trouble. Everyone will fail. And eventually everyone dies. There’s no getting around it. There is only walking through it. The only question is how. And will your trouble be blessed? How can trouble be blessed? How can hardship, suffering, or death be blessed? It’s blessed by God’s love. This is the thoughtful, intentional love of a Father, and our grateful, joyful response to that love in the midst of difficulty. Our Father in Heaven is more hovering than any father on earth. He has told the story of the world, and He placed His love on His people from before the world began, foreknowing them, predestining them, preparing all things for their good and His glory. 

This means that every danger, every trial, every difficulty was hand-picked by our Father for us, with love, and He did not pick our trials so that we would fail. He picked them so that we would learn to truly live, so that we would learn to love like He loves, so that we would learn to praise Him and give Him thanks. 

This meal is a picture of that love: Christ crucified for sinners. He went into danger for us. He faced down the dragons of sin and death for us. And because His trouble was blessed, God raised Him from the death. He offers this bread and wine to us as an invitation to follow Him into trouble. But not just any kind of trouble, into the trouble of adventure, the trouble of living life to the fullest, the trouble of life blessed by the eternal love of our Father. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash