Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 54

What This Table Says

This table is the table of No Condemnation in Christ Jesus. You’ve probably seen communion tables in other churches engraved with the words “In Remembrance of Me”—which is an entirely fitting thing to engrave on a communion table. But another fitting phrase would be the words, No Condemnation.

There are two opposite errors of unbelief one can commit when invited to this table of No Condemnation. The first is to turn away because you know you aren’t good, you’ve sinned, and you look around at the sin and heartbreaking evil in the world and reject the offer because it seems unrealistic, naïve, a fairy tale and make-believe. How can the message of this table really do anything about those problems? The other error is to come to the table but to come not believing in condemnation. You come because it’s traditional, but you’re honestly not sure what the big deal is, everyone makes mistakes. One error doesn’t believe the condemnation can be removed, the other error doesn’t believe in the condemnation. 

This table refutes both lies, both forms of unbelief. This table proclaims the reality of sin, failure, shame, guilt, pain, gnawing regret, heartbreak, despair, violence. This table proclaims the reality of sin and evil in the broken body and shed blood of an innocent man. Here, God tells the truth without flinching: this world is full of condemnation, full of guilt, full of evil.

This table also refutes the one who cannot believe that the condemnation can be taken away. Here, God proclaims that He was Himself the innocent man who was killed in the place of sinful man. God proclaims to you that the death of Jesus was not one more sorry injustice, one more unfortunate lynching, one more senseless act of violence – though it was all of those things to some extent, but here God announces that He took our sin in Christ by bearing it all Himself. He took our lies, our lust, our bitterness, our pride, our self-inflicted agony, our disobedience, all of our God damn filth. He took all our condemnation, and He crushed it in His own body on the cross, and He rose victorious over it all, that we being dead to sin might live in Him.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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Busted Clocks

One of the great perennial lies of fallen Man is that if God is love and we love some sin, then it must not really be sin and God must want us to keep doing what we’re doing, to be happy in our sin. If God is love, and I love obsessing over my physical appearance, then God must love me obsessing over my physical appearance. If God is love, and I love obsessing over nutrition and health concerns, God must love my obsession over those things too. If God is love, and I love a particular career path, hobby, sport, friendship, then surely God wants me to be happy by continuing to chase my dreams.

But the great lie is that our loves must be good and that our loves will actually make us happy. The truth is that we frequently love terrible things or we love good things in terrible ways. As Augustine famously put it, our loves are disordered. Our love is a broken compass, a false clock, malfunctioning scales. Our love cannot be trusted. Our loves will lie to us, distort the world around us, and lead us off cliffs. God is love, but our loves are not God. We need our loves re-ordered and replaced, and that means we must lay our loves before God honestly. 

Lord, what do you think of my love of this career path? Lord, what do you think of my love of this friend? Lord, what do you think of my love of this hobby, this passion, this dream? 

And one way the Lord answers that honest prayer is by looking honestly at how that love is affecting your walk with God. Is that love drawing you closer to Jesus, really? Is that love drawing you closer to His Word? Is that love causing you to see your sin and God’s grace more clearly? Is it drawing you closer to God’s people, your spouse, your children, your parents, your roommates? Or is that love pulling you away, distracting you, merely affirming you and not actually confronting you?  

God’s love certainly welcomes every son of Adam, every daughter of Eve just as they are, but God’s love doesn’t leave us there. God’s love is determined to save sinners, and a central part of that salvation is saving us from ourselves.

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Engraved on His Armor

There’s a great deal of rich theology in the Old Testament sacrificial system, and one of the more wonderful parts is when God commanded Moses to make the uniform of the High Priest which included a breast plate which was fashioned with twelve stones: twelve different kinds of precious stone, including a sapphire, a diamond, a jasper, a topaz, and others (Ex. 28:21).

But not only that, God instructed Moses to have the names of the tribes of Israel engraved on the precious stones, one tribe on each stone. This is already an indication of something glorious: God considers His people precious and valuable. In fact, this is what God had said when Israel first showed up at Mt. Sinai: “You shall be to me a peculiar treasure above all people.” This is symbolized in engraving the names of the families of Israel on precious stones on the breastplate of the High Priest. 

But it doesn’t stop there. 

The whole point of having the names engraved on the stones on the breastplate of the High Priest is so that the High Priest can wear the breastplate with the names of the tribes of Israel into the Holy Place as a memorial before the Lord continually (Ex. 28:29). In fact, the text says that God wants the Priest to bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart whenever he goes into the Holy Place. 

All of this is fulfilled in Christ, who is our new High Priest. Christ stands in Heaven, ever interceding for us. But the thing to catch is that Jesus does not merely save sinners from their sin. He does not merely bring us out of the dungeons we have created for ourselves. But Christ pays our debts, brings us home, and then in His infinite grace determines to wear us as His glory-armor. In Heaven, Jesus stands before God continually and our names are engraved on His heart. And this is why you are most welcome here. You did not come here on your own, your name was engraved on His heart on the cross, and so you were carried all the way in. 

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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Remembering Sabbath & Cultivating Loyalty

Jesus gave us this meal and said, do this in remembrance of me. So it’s no accident that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the Lord’s Day – the Christian Sabbath.

The fourth commandment is to remember the Sabbath Day, to remember that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, to remember that Israel had been slaves in Egypt and God had brought them out. Here at this table, Jesus renews that fourth commandment having remade the world, having brought us out of the Greater Egypt of sin and death. So we celebrate this meal remembering the New Creation, the New Exodus, the New Covenant accomplished by Jesus in His death and resurrection. We remember the Sabbath rest that Jesus won for us here in our worship and in our homes as we rest and rejoice in Him. 

But all of this underlines a broader Christian habit that Jesus is teaching us here, the habit of remembering and giving thanks. At the center, we remember Jesus and we give thanks for Him. But we are also celebrating this meal thousands of years into the history of the world, two thousand years into the reign of Christ, and so we have so much to remember and give thanks for.

One of the natural results of this kind of Christian remembering is loyalty to our people. Loyalty to Jesus is central and over all, but we can’t help but remember the many generations that have come before us who also remembered Him. They remembered Christ and they taught their children to remember Him, and then they taught their children, and their grandchildren became our great-grandparents. 

For some of us this is literally true, and what a great gift that is. But in our modern individualism so many of us don’t know much about our families or the little we know is pretty distressing. But let this meal teach you to begin remembering again, to knit you closer to your people, past, present, and future, and let it teach you to remember that part of the grace of this table is the fact that here all of us have been adopted into a new family in Christ, and now you have family like the stars of the heavens, a family beyond all reckoning. 

So come and remember, and come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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That Simple

We serve a kind Father not a cruel Master. At the center of His kindness is His willingness to forgive our sins and let us start over again. When it comes to cruelty and slavery, we are the cruel slavers. We are the ones that wallow in our own filth. We put up with sin, letting it gnaw on our legs, stealing our joy, sucking life from us – we pull the noose tight around our own necks. 

Maybe it’s in your home, a slow accumulation of petty grievances, bickering, bad attitudes, criticism, worry. It may not be obvious on the outside, but everyone is just a little on edge: your spouse, your children, your siblings, your roommates. Maybe you tell yourself this is just life, you’re just tired, there’s just a lot of people in your house, it’s noisy, you’re hungry. This is just the way I am. We can’t really stop being this way. We’re only human. Everyone does this sometimes. 

But don’t you see? You are being the cruel slaver. You are the one saying, I just can’t leave this prison cell. I just can’t be free of my sin. We just can’t overcome our past, our failures, our habits. 

But the kindness of our Father is greater than our cruelty. And He says, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isa. 1:18). Our Father says, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36). Your Father says, “I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 8:12).

God is not a cruel master; He is a kind Father. And we know this because He sent His only Son to die for our sins. So start over now, get clean now, and then go from this place and put things right. Have a family meeting, talk to your wife, your husband, your kids, your roommates, look each other in the eye, ask for forgiveness, forgive one another, and ask the Lord to let you begin again. It really is that simple. You can start over again. For with God there is forgiveness and with Him abundant redemption. 

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Idols Before Christ & After

In that famous Christian calendar verse, Joshua is remembered for his courageous stand at the end of his life, proclaiming that he and his household would serve the Lord. But prior to doing that, in the same breath, he called out his contemporary Israelites for their idolatry. He urged them to choose between the Lord and the gods their fathers served in Egypt or the gods they have had begun to serve in the land of Canaan. 

This really is quite striking. Many of the people who had been delivered out of Egypt by the ten plagues and through the sea, brought Egyptian idols with them, and then having been led through the wilderness fed by miraculous bread out of heaven for forty years and led by Joshua over the Jordan to conquer Canaan, beginning with the miraculous destruction of Jericho, many of the same people had taken up Canaanite idols. And these were all the relatively good Israelites that God had not destroyed for their various rebellions. 

Paul wrote the Corinthians and said that these things were written down specifically for Christians who would be tempted to think they were immune to idols (1 Cor. 10). One way to think about these various idols would be the idols from before our conversion to Christ and the idols that we pick up after our conversion to Christ: the idols of Egypt and the idols of Canaan. 

An idol is anything that God made that we have tried to refashion as a means of getting some gift, some peace, or some pleasure apart from God’s blessing or design. 

So what might those be?

Like the man tormented in the tombs, their name is Legion.

How about the idol of respectability? The idols of being liked, having friends, being thought well of, success. Closely related to this would be idols of comfort: finding your peace in a comfortable home, job, income level, clothing, health. Or what about the idol of pleasure: the Israelites of old lusted for food and drink and sex, trying to find joy and peace in these things rather than the God of all joy and peace. C.S. Lewis said that we are far too easily pleased with things like drink and sex. We’re like a little kid who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.

But in the presence of God there is fullness of joy; at His right hand there are pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11).

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The Lamb’s Linen

“Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, “Write: `Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!'” And he said to me, “These are the true sayings of God.” (Rev. 19:7-9)

This table is a weekly preview of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, a weekly practice for feasting with Christ in glory forever. And so we want to practice well. As far as we are able, we want to see a true preview and not misunderstand what is happening here. 

So notice in this text that the New Jerusalem, the Church, appears before God arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, and that the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. But notice where the linen came from: it was given to her, it was granted to her. And so this is how you make yourself ready. This is how you prepare for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. You receive what He has given to you. You put on what He has granted. And what He grants is righteousness, and He grants us His righteousness in such a way that it can be rightly called the righteousness of the saints.

Mark this well: you do not make yourself ready by conjuring up good works out of your own inner goodness. You do not prepare yourself for God by being good, by doing righteous acts of your own. No, you prepare yourself for God by receiving His goodness, which then becomes your goodness. You get ready by putting on the clean, bright linen of His righteousness. Our hearts and hands are dirty. We can never make our clothes clean enough. You and I are not good. But it has been granted to all who ask to wear the Lamb’s linen. He is the spotless Lamb, and if you wear His linen, you stand before God completely spotless and clean. Blessed are all those who are called to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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Spaghetti Sabers and Cotton Candy Canons

Introduction

The western church is in a great war. While we hold fast to the promise of Christ that the gates of Hades will never prevail against the Church Universal and we trust that the Great Commission will in fact be completed, and all the ends of the earth will turn and remember the Lord, these are not promises that guarantee success at every stage. 

The fact that we have churches consecrating homosexual unions, preaching socialism and critical theory, and even blessing abortion clinics tells you the state of the modern western church. And now even so-called conservative churches have effeminate non-practicing gays in their leadership. We have what you might call a situation on our hands. But you can’t fight evil with compromise. You can’t fight wickedness with faux holiness. You need real holiness, truth in the inward parts, complete surrender to God’s Word and unflinching obedience to whatever it says. And you can’t insist that the other guys do that while you don’t. That’s what they call hypocrisy.

So read the Bible. When did God’s people prevail? When did they get their hineys kicked? Over and over and over, it’s the same story. God’s people are blessed when they worship God in spirit and in truth, when they forsake all idols, confess their sins, and cry out to God in true humility. And God’s people get trounced when they worship idols, when they compromise with the nations, when they try to hide sins in their tents. 

So do the math. Why are Christians being run to the ground in this culture? Because we worship idols, because we hide sin in our tents, because we arrogantly twist scripture to suit our tastes and preferences. Let me give you just one simple example of how conservative churches are currently doing this. 

The Glaring Problem

The Bible clearly teaches that the children of church leaders must be Christians. If a church leader’s children rebel, leave the faith, or are otherwise living in scandalous sin, that church leader is no longer qualified for office and in obedience to God should submit his resignation, step down, and find another line of work and serve Christ in that capacity. 

An elder/bishop is “one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?)” (1 Tim. 3:4-5). An elder is qualified if he is a man who is “blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination” (Tit. 1:6). Likewise, Paul says that deacons must “be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well” (1 Tim. 3:12). 

God says that our elders and deacons must have faithful and orderly homes, but in our arrogance, we redefine these verses and insist that we know better than God. We explain the pastor’s daughter’s premarital pregnancy as just what happens in a fallen world. We explain the deacon’s sons in drug rehab as just the cost of doing business. We excuse the fact that the elder’s children are rebellious and apathetic and everything you don’t want in the youth group as the cross he has to bear. We excuse the bitterness of the elder’s wife as a personality quirk or maybe even the not-so-secret fact of the pastor’s anger issues because he’s such a gifted preacher. And sure, the deacon’s daughter was excommunicated, but he was so humble and meek through the whole process, isn’t that just a model of Christian leadership?

Well, if he’s still a deacon, then no, it isn’t a model of leadership at all. Whatever he’s been doing through the whole process, it isn’t biblical humility or meekness. Why wasn’t he at the front of the line with a letter of resignation insisting that he is no longer qualified to serve? Why wasn’t he at the front of the line insisting that he obey the Word of God?

Are there ever exceptional situations? Sure, of course. Should a daughter who was adopted at 13 be held to the same standard as a daughter raised from birth in the pastor’s home? No. But compromise is a road paved with an ever growing list of exceptions, which turn out to be just excuses for not obeying God’s clear word.

Real Intolerance and Bigotry

But this is the point: so long as conservative churches make these excuses, they have no moral foot to stand on when a young, effeminate man arises who wants to identify publicly with his temptation to sodomy and lead worship or pursue ordination. He promises that he is staying pure, has accountability partners, but definitely identifies as queer and this is the cross he must bear. He went to the Revoice conference and feels empowered to live for Jesus as a celibate gay man.

How can you actually stand up and condemn this effeminacy and homosexuality while you harbor high handed disobedience to God on your elder board? While you refuse to actually address the sin in your leadership, you are making it clear that your stance against this sexual immorality is merely a matter of personal prejudice. There are certain sins that you will tolerate. You will tolerate a gossiping secretary, bitter elder’s wives, apostate pastor’s kids, but when it comes to anything approaching a lisp the hammer of Thor falls. But that means that all your preaching and protesting against homo-sins actually is just straight up intolerance. You can tolerate some sins but not those. And to that extent, the Left is entirely right to point out the inconsistency.

The world sees through our hypocrisy. As long as we put up with our pet sins, while condemning the sins of the left, we are not being Christians, we’re just being bigots. 

Where Judgment Begins

But the answer is not to go soft on sodomy and effeminacy, the answer is to repent of all our softness at the same time. Repent and step down from office. Repent of your cowardice and respectfully request the matter be considered by your leaders. Repent and insist that freedom and joy and courage is found in Christ, in His forgiveness and in obedience to His word — all of it, no exceptions. This isn’t legalism. This is the only kind of freedom there is. Do you want the world to bow the knee to Christ, why don’t you show them how?

Our leaders have spaghetti sabers and cotton candy canons. To the extent that they refuse to turn their guns on their own sins, they are cowards and fakes. They stand in their pulpits and shadow box with idols and demons or perhaps some will even wave their hands around wildly on Twitter or Facebook, but they will not actually land a punch or launch a real rocket against the kingdom of darkness because their marriage is a sour mess, their kids hate them and their god, and everyone is just biding their time. They don’t really intend to submit to God’s word. They are not actually resisting evil because that requires actual holiness. Their selective application of God’s clear word amounts to returning evil for evil, which really is just malicious, sinful hatred, not godly resistance to sin.

Judgment begins with the household of God (1 Pet. 4:17). We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world – and therefore if the world is dark and rotten, it is because the Church is dark and rotten. We do not believe the gospel for our sin, and therefore we do not really trust and obey the Word of God. Why should the world believe and obey if we do not?

Conclusion

Why is the world going up in the flames of lust and perversion? Because we taught the world that it is OK to read the Bible selectively. We taught them that if something is really shameful, we can just ignore it and hope it goes away. Or worse, we can claim that the shame is actually a sign of our faithfulness, scars of ministry, the cross we must bear. We taught them that God’s word is optional whenever it makes us feel uncomfortable and can be reinterpreted to support whatever it was that we wanted to do in the first place. We taught them that some sins and scandals just can’t be avoided despite what God’s word says. Revoice is just following the logic of what the PCA and many conservatives have been practicing with their leaders for decades.

Why are we losing this culture war? Because we refuse God’s blessing. We worship with bloody hands. There is no truth in our inward parts. Just look at the state of our leaders’ families. And if your church refuses to actually deal with obvious problems in leader families, find a new church. Why would you go to a church where the leaders are publicly insisting that the Bible only applies where they want it to? This kind of selective reading is idolatry. The idol may be the leader himself, a public reputation of the ministry, comfort, ease, financial stability, or any number of other considerations, but you can be sure that the one God that church does not fear is the living God. So why would you want to stay there?

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Bearing One Another’s Burdens

Ex. 18:13-27

Introduction 

Most Christians are familiar with the exhortation to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2), but we often assume that this merely means we should have Christian friends we can share our struggles and hardships with. But Paul is actually exhorting Christians to practice a particular kind of spiritual authority and wisdom that flows from knowing Christ crucified and having His Spirit. We see this pattern of bearing burdens going back to the godly counsel Jethro gave to Moses.

Summary of the Text

At the time of the Exodus, Israel was comprised of around 600,000 fighting men (Ex. 12:37, 38:26). So we may reasonably estimate that the total number of Israel was in the millions. Our text picks up a couple of months after the Exodus when Jethro comes with Zipporah and Moses’ two sons to meet Moses nearMt. Sinai (Ex. 18:5). After catching up and worshiping God together (Ex. 18:7-12), Jethro watched Moses judging the people all day long (Ex. 18:13-16). Jethro echoes God’s assessment of Adam being alone and says this is “not good” and is too heavy a burden for Moses to carry by himself (Ex. 18:17-18). Jethro counsels Moses to teach the laws of God to the people (Ex. 18:19-20), and establish judges who fear God, love the truth, and hate covetousness and set them over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens (Ex. 18:21-21). These men will judge the smaller cases, and the heavier ones can be appealed to higher courts, and the hardest cases will come before Moses, in order for Moses to be more efficient with his time and for the sake of peace in Israel (Ex. 18:22-23). Moses obeyed his father in law and established this structure of judges in Israel (Ex. 18:24-26). 

Heavy Hands

Remember that right before this meeting with Jethro was the battle with the Amalekites. While Moses lifted his hands up, Israel was prevailing, but when his hands grew heavy and fell down, the Amalekites began to prevail (Ex. 17:11). So Moses sat down and Aaron and Hur stood on either side of him and held his hands up until Israel won the battle (Ex. 17:12-13). The same theme continues in our text underlined by the word “heavy” (Ex. 18:18), and the assistance of the judges is also described by Jethro as “bearing the burden” with Moses (Ex. 18:22).

Some Jewish commentators have estimated, taking the numbers very literally, that when he was finished Moses would have appointed 78,600 judges. But the principle is one of decentralization and localism: addressing problems at the smallest, most personal level first and then appealing the most difficult problems to higher courts as necessary. This is one of the biblical principles built into our civil governments and courts, separation of powers, and sphere sovereignty (family, church, and state). 

Judging the Angels

In the review of this institution in Deuteronomy, Moses says that these officers were appointed by the people: “Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you” (Dt. 1:13). Clearly, there was collaboration between established authorities (Moses) and the people, indicating that there was to be accountability in both directions. And the Lord used this process to raise up qualified leaders. In the New Testament we see the appointment of elders in every city (Tit. 1:5, 1 Tim. 3:4-5), as well as deacons, following a very similar pattern of appointment (Acts 6:1-7).

Jesus also assumed the Jethro principle in his instructions for confronting sin: go and tell your brother his fault between you and him alone, and only involve two or three witnesses if necessary, and appeal to the church as a last resort (Mt. 18:15-20). Likewise, Paul insists that the Corinthians practice church discipline for unrepentant sinners (1 Cor. 5:1-5), but this means practicing in all the little things and not taking disputes between believers before unbelieving courts (1 Cor. 6:1). Since we will judge the world and angels, we should always rather be defrauded than go to court with a fellow saint (1 Cor. 6:2-7), while still submitting to the civil magistrate in criminal matters, who as a minister of God’s vengeance (Rom. 13:4). The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, but those who have been purchased by the blood of Christ have been washed, justified by Christ, and sanctified by the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:9-11). 

You Who Are Spiritual

“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:1-2). We shouldn’t miss the fact that part of what it means to be “spiritual” was just explained a couple verses prior with the fruit of the Spirit, against which there is no law (Gal. 5:22-23). In other words, the fruit of the Spirit is for making godly judgements. And making godly judgments is how we bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. As Moses told Israel, this requires that we not “respect persons” or “fear the face of man” (Dt. 1:17). It means that the goal must be to win our brother, to restore our brother, and all in “a spirit of meekness” – but that description doesn’t seem accidental since Moses was described as more meek than anyone on the face of the earth (Num. 12:3). What’s this spirit of Moses?

In Numbers, right before this description of Moses, in the midst of one of Israel’s complaints, Moses cried out to God, “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me” (Num. 11:14), and in response God said, “Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel… And I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee…” (Num. 11:16-17). Sobearing one another’s burdens means applying the law of Christ with wisdom to the situations around you, and gladly working within the biblical structures God has established. You can’t do that rightly unless you have the Spirit of God, unless you are “spiritual,” and you do not have the Spirit of God unless you have been adopted into God’s family by faith in the Son of God (Gal. 4:4-7).

Conclusion

Bearing one another’s burdens is not just listening to other people’s problems. In fact, unless you are part of the solution, you may merely be making things worse. We’ve been inundated with the false gospel of “sharing,” but the Bible does not teach that there is any automatic blessing in merely “sharing.” Faithfulare the wounds of godly friends, but the kisses of enemies are deceitful (Prov. 27:6). Flattery works ruin (Prov. 26:28), but where there is no talebearer, strife ceases (Prov. 26:20). And a faithful spirit covers many sins in love (Prov. 11:13, 10:12). 

The Jethro principle is applied as God pours out His Spirit upon all flesh and establishes leaders in all spheres of authority who apply the word of Christ faithfully. If you have the Spirit of Christ then you are called to walk in the Spirit, in the fear of God, loving the truth, and hating all envy.

Christ sits in heaven with His pierced hands raised for us, never growing tired, so that we can always cast our cares upon Him because He cares for us, and therefore, we will win the battle.  

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Children & Strangers

“For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39).

As you know, this is one of the key passages we point to defending our understanding of the New Covenant – that the New Covenant includes our children. The promises that God made to Abraham in the Old Covenant included his children, and so Peter insists that those same promises are being fulfilled in the New Covenant and so we include our children.

But Peter also insists in the same place that these promises apply to those who are afar off – strangers, gentiles, sojourners, foreigners, as many as the Lord our God will call. And so if we understand this correctly, our enthusiasm for including our children really needs to match our enthusiasm to welcome the strangers. The task of evangelism and missions, sharing the gospel, is not really something different from welcoming our children to Jesus. It’s the same covenantal promises that invite our children to trust in Jesus as invite all unbelievers to trust in Him. 

So don’t think of evangelism as something that takes highly specialized training, even though God does call and equip particular men as evangelists. But how do you talk to your kids about Jesus? Do you point out God’s beautiful creation and teach them to give Him thanks? Do you teach them that if they confess their sins, God will wash them clean by the blood of Christ? Do you smile and correct their sins and weaknesses patiently? You should, and it really isn’t that different with your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates. 

Or make it even simpler: How were you welcomed to Christ? What were the things that clicked with you, that won you, that made you love Christ? Then tell someone. Tell your kids, tell your neighbors, tell your classmates, tell your boss. Welcome them to your table, share the feast with them. And don’t forget to look around at this table – are there faces you don’t recognize here? Meet someone new after church, look for a hungry student and invite them over. We are sharing Christ here, and this means you are being thoroughly equipped to share Him everywhere you go. The promise is to you and your children, and to those who are afar. 

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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