Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 55

That Infestation Problem

One of the keys to Christian life is reckoning yourself dead. Jesus said that anyone that wanted to follow Him had to deny their own lives and take up their own cross and follow Him daily. They need to take up a tool of torture and death and carry it around with them everywhere they go. If anyone would find their life, they must lose it constantly, daily, moment by moment, but everyone who tries to save their own life will lose it.

The beginning of Christian life is recognizing that you are dead in your sins and there is no way to get yourself out. All the graves of the world are one way trips — except one. So the offer of Christ is for anyone who will trust in Him to share His grave. And His grave is empty. The stone is rolled away. But that’s the only way out of sin, death, and the domain of the devil. There is no other way out.

But this remains true throughout the Christian life. There is no other life – there is only life in Christ. Would you kill that nagging sin? That lust, that anger, that bad attitude, that worry? Then reckon yourself dead in Christ. Tell the truth about yourself: you do not just have a little sin problem, a small nagging issue. You have an infestation. You are covered in death maggots. You’re a rotting corpse with nothing good in you. 

This is the ground of all Christian worship: that the Holy God came for filthy corpses and suffered and died the death we deserve, the death we could never finish. The problem is that we frequently don’t believe that Jesus really needed to die. We may think it makes a dramatic story, but really we aren’t that bad. And so we cling to our own grave, our own grave clothes, and we wonder why these worms keep showing up in our hearts.

Look up. Look in the mirror. It’s way worse than you thought. We need to die, but if we will die in Christ, if we will reckon all of our attempts futile and worthless, then Christ will live in us. And if you think about that, it ought to bring a humble warmth to your face, and the kind of gratitude that is hard to shake.

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The Tyranny of Woke Gnosticism

Introduction

Turns out that there really is nothing new under the sun. The new spirituality is an old heresy come back with a vengeance and a Nike swoosh. The name of it is Gnosticism. The old gnostic sects were mystery cults surrounding so-called “secret knowledge” societies, inner ring initiations, combined with a dualistic distain for the material world. What mattered was not matter, physical reality, or history or facts. What mattered was the “true” spiritual gnosis, the secret mystical knowledge that cracked the code of existence and freed you from the “confines” of this physical, historical world.

Some early converts to Christianity thought that Jesus might be a new gnostic cult leader, and some versions of the Judaizers might have been semi-gnostics. But what the first apostles made clear is that the gospel of Jesus is a public proclamation for the healing of this world, not a secret, mystical cult. God did not merely “appear” to come in human flesh. He became a real man, a true man. By the incarnation, He permanently embraced human flesh, this material world, in order to save it. And this is not a secret, mystical knowledge. Jesus was crucified in public, in history, under Pontius Pilate, and He rose from the dead with a true, glorified human body that could eat and drink and be touched. And He was seen by hundreds of witnesses.

The thing to point out is the fact that history is the friend of truth and justice and therefore every man. As we do not tire of pointing out, justice is blindfolded in all the old statues and paintings. This is because she only measures the facts – and facts are wonderfully historic and public, in that they can be independently verified. Justice is not to be swayed by age or sex or skin color or income level or hurt feelings or climate change. She merely examines the historical facts by means of witnesses and evidence. And this understanding of justice is thoroughly biblical and Christian. The reason we have due process and presumption of innocence and multiple corroborating witnesses and trial by jury is because Jesus rose from the dead in history and was seen by hundreds of witnesses. The resurrection of Jesus is the bedrock foundation for Western justice – otherwise biblical notions of justice are merely parochial, ethnic preferences and have no business claiming universal applicability. But the current anarchic spasm insisting that we will not have Jesus as our Lord (despite the Constitution’s explicit reference to His birth) is simultaneously an insistence that we be ruled by the capricious whims of gnostic tyranny. What is left after material facts and witnesses and historical evidence have been banished from the public square? What you are left with is secret knowledge, mystical feelings, woke tyranny, emotive lemmings.

Woke Tyranny

This demon of gnosticism that was driven out of the early church and Hellenistic culture has come back to Western civilization with seven more mad hatter friends. So let me give you a number of examples of woke tyranny.

What is a man or a woman? How many sexes are there? If you say that there are any more than two sexes and divorce your definitions from chromosomal, physiological, material realities, you are succumbing to the new gnostic jihad. A man who says he feels like a woman on the inside is claiming some kind of gnostic, secret knowledge because, not to put too fine a point on it, you can’t verify that with any of kind proof, evidence, or material demonstration. This hidden woman could not be located inside this troubled man even with the help of six over zealous TSA agents with blue latex gloves. These trans-claims dismiss the material reality of how God made the world and insist that the “truth” is something immaterial, mystical, a secret knowledge available only to the truly initiated. And since you don’t “get it,” you must be forced to fall into step with the times. You must let the dude in the dress into your daughter’s locker room. Can we see proof of that dude’s female identity? Sorry, sir, please step away from the holy place where our high priests concoct secret rituals with the innards of Critical Theory. You will be made to shave some dude’s junk, you will do trans surgeries, and our name for this is progress – you paying for whatever sick fantasy I dream up next.

We’ve seen the same thing with ethnicity – what is black or white? Again, the definitions being pressed upon us are not merely levels of pigment in the skin or actual biological, familial descent – something physical, material, and demonstrable (whatever descriptive value that may be), but levels of secret knowledge, who your friends are, who accepts you, your “lived experience,” what the establishment now calls “woke” is completely unverifiable. This term indicates the initiated, those who have been welcomed onto the team, into the inner sanctum of the inner city, those who have asked AOC into the projects of their hearts, and that secret knowledge transcends all material realities and troublesome facts, and since Thomas Sowell isn’t woke, he certainly doesn’t count as black. As Gnostic Priestess Rep. Ayanna Pressely put it recently, “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be brown voices. We don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be black voices.” Brown and black are mystical qualities, secret knowledge, gnostic codes. And if you don’t get that, if you don’t submit to our secret understanding, you’re a fat toothed hillbilly.

So let me get this straight (please forgive the heteronormative adjective): some black and brown faces are not speaking for black and brown voices, so why can’t Justin Trudeau don a brown face in order to speak for brown voices? He ain’t woke enough? Or why can’t Rachel Dolezal fully embrace black culture unironically?

The reason is shut up! 

What you will find is that rather than anything approaching a reasonable answer, you will immediately be shouted down because you’re an arch-racist heretic. You just don’t get it. You can’t understand what it’s like to be black. Ok, but a dude can put on a dress and you’ll make him woman of the year? How is it that something as essential as gendered chromosomes is more accessible and replicable than the amount of pigment in my skin? The differences between the races are deeper than biology? Talk about racism.

Gnosticism is always a powerplay. The genius of secret knowledge is that it can’t be pinned down. It morphs and bends and modifies and inverts at will. And turns out that the “will” is the will of whoever happens to have the adulation of the masses at the moment, and it is their erratic, emotive fits that defines the demand of the moment. It is not reasonable, and therefore it doesn’t care about reason, facts, evidence, history, testimony, or witnesses. In fact, all of those things are vestiges of the repressive, patriarchal past. Free your mind from all of those tiresome medieval tropes. The new woke Gnosticism cares only about what it cares about this minute and whatever Trump said on Twitter last night.

But the tyranny train keeps acomin’. What is justice? How do you know if justice has been served? Well, in our #metoo era, it is apparently the shrieks and moans and convulsions of the media-internet mob. Justice, according to the new woke Gnosticism, is the resulting freudenschaude from the latest sacrificial victim disemboweled on the altar of our collective cancel culture rage.

So what is rape? Can it be defined by a description of physical acts and circumstances that can be witnessed or proved by evidence? Of course not, you incorrigible rube. Rape is functionally being defined as whatever a woman decides retroactively she didn’t particularly like at any point in the past. She may have been raped by George Washington — I mean look at the way he ogles her from the dollar bill! She may have been raped by Martin Luther, John Calvin, maybe even by Jesus Christ himself. But if a woman can marry inanimate objects, do not think that these cannot turn into abusive relationships. She may have been raped by the Bible, democracy, the cotton gin, AR-15s, but she has almost certainly been raped by capitalism. I mean seriously, who has capitalism not raped? She may have signed consent forms, but consent forms are systems of patriarchal oppression. She may have smiled, laughed, and nothing may have even happened. But if she transcends this prison of material reality and senses the transcendent mystical meaning of that moment 30 years ago, her inner goddess must be worshipped, and all opposition must be destroyed. All questions for clarification or requests for evidence are indications of latent rapist intentions and misogyny.

The Insanity of Sin

All of this is fundamentally driven by the insanity of sin. Paul wrote centuries ago that those who deny the Creator God clearly manifest in creation suppress the truth in unrighteousness, and professing themselves to be wise become fools, and they begin to confess their climate sins to potted plants and NBC. 

Self-deception goes down deep, and many are so self-deceived that they believe their lies very firmly. But let there be no mistake: they are still deceiving themselves. They are still moral agents, and they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. They are in active rebellion against the God who made them. They hate Him. And this is the catnip that drives this whole societal seizure. The foaming at the mouth, the delirious stump speeches, the schizophrenic legislation, the straight faced bloviating on the evening news – it is all the necessary result of turning from the Living God. You can’t ban the origin of all reason and remain reasonable. You can’t suppress the truth and retain any resistance to lies. You cannot damn God’s ordained means of forgiveness and salvation and not run pellmell into the oblivion.

This fundamental human rebellion has always been driven by the offer of secret knowledge – knowledge without God, apart from God. If you eat of the tree, your eyes will be open. You will know. You will be gods. But it turns out that what we become is a twisted inversion of God, restless, erratic demons, set on tyranny and destruction.

But Christ was crucified in public for all of this. He was raised from the dead to cure this manic conniption. He was pierced to take away our sins. And therefore, He is not moved. He sits enthroned and laughs at our folly, and sends His preachers out. And they proclaim this glorious message: Christ was crucified for sinners, Christ was crucified for the insanity of sin, Christ was crucified for raging traitors. And one by one, He saves these frightened, rebel orphans. They fall to their knees in humble surrender and He clothes them in His grace, washes them clean, and brings them home to sit in seats of honor at His table. And as the places fill up, they are all, every last one of them, sitting there clothed and in their right mind and there is nothing but praise in their mouths.

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A Table for Prostitutes

Here at this table we remember and are reminded of the gospel. So remember that gospel means “good news.” Here we celebrate the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We celebrate His body broken and His blood shed in our place, for our sins, which simply means that this meal is for sinners. This meal is for screwups. This meal is for those who know they need a Savior. 

This meal is not for good people who have it all together. This meal is not for perfect marriages, perfect families, perfect kids, perfect parents, or perfect roommates or neighbors. This meal is for fornicators and adulterers and homosexuals, for thieves and liars, for prostitutes and tax collectors, for murderers and rapists, for blasphemers and for those who have dishonored their parents, for complainers and gossips and those who have lost their temper in a rage. 

And what you find here is Christ who was crucified for those sins. You find His body broken and His blood shed to take away those sins. You cannot come here and hold on to those sins, but if you are ready to be rid of them, Christ is here, ready to set you free. Christ is here ready to wash you completely clean. And so you are invited, and you are most welcome. This is the good news, the gospel.

Are you a sinner? Then you qualify. Do you need grace? Then come. Do you need wisdom? This meal is for you? Are you anxious, worried, fearful, heartbroken? Then come to Christ. His body was broken for you. His blood was shed for you.  

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

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A Prayer for Our Days

Many are they who say, there is no God, God does not see. Many rise up that trouble Your people, who slay the widow and the fatherless and the sojourner. Many pass laws and regulations and increase taxes to crush the poor and trouble the righteous, and they say that they will get away with it because they think there is no God who will intervene and save. 

But You, O Lord, are our Shield. You are our glory. And You lift up our heads. Salvation belongs to You alone. And so we cry out to You alone. How long will You not hear the cries of the innocent? How long, O Lord, will you allow the murderous holocaust of abortion in our land? How long, O Lord, will you allow our insolence in the high places, our bribery and payoffs, our lies and our theft, our abominations under every green tree, every strip mall, every movie theater, every pride parade.   

Rise up, O Lord and fight for us. Break out the teeth of the lions. Strike them on the cheek, so that they know there is a God in Heaven, so that they know that Jesus is Lord.

We will not fear if the ungodly surround us with taunts and jeers and threats. We will rest in you. We will sleep soundly every night. Because we worship You, Our Father, in the name Jesus Christ alone, by the power of the Holy Spirit, world without end, Amen.

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Until He Comes

Every week, as we celebrate this meal, we repeat the words of Jesus who said, “For as often as you this eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death until He come.” 

In other words, we celebrate this meal in anticipation of heaven. Every Lord’s Day we are counting down to Heaven. All the indications are that this world has a number of generations to go. God promised that His mercy would extend to thousands of generations, and we aren’t even close to one thousand generations in the history of the world. The Bible counts 40 years as a generation, and in 6,000 years there’s only been 150 generations. And besides, the Bible says that Jesus must reign in Heaven until all of His enemies have been put beneath His feet, the last enemy being death itself. But that is a glorious count down: the count down to death-no-more, the count down to tears wiped away, the count down to all things made new, Heaven come down to earth.

But every one us will stand before the Lord within a generation or so. The power of death has been defeated, but these mortal bodies still grow weak and die. And so every time we celebrate this meal, we are also counting down to that day, the day the Lord comes to take us home, the day this life is over. And that day is far closer than any of us may imagine. And that is either the most glorious thought, your greatest longing, your highest joy, or else it is only pure terror and horror. But you cannot celebrate this meal rightly and be terrified of the Lord coming to take you home. We celebrate in this meal the Lord’s death, triumphing over our guilt and sins, and His coming for us. Therefore, every time we eat this meal together, we look in faith to our Savior, believing in full assurance that He will come and carry us through death and bringing us safely home.

O Death, where is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory?

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Christianity as Punk Rock

Introduction
I posted last week the following: “Biblical norms are the new punk rock. Get married young, have a pile of kids, work hard, confess sins, forgive quickly, read good stories, laugh a lot, be faithful to your spouse & teach your kids to do the same. This is counter cultural & a beautiful, winning, living culture.”

I think the point was sufficiently clear, and it met with a fairly robust applause, and so in the interest of encouraging the enthusiastic reaction, and encouraging said counter-culture, let me say a few additional things.

And let me begin by answering one comment that simply wondered if I had actually ever listened to any punk rock music. And the answer is yes. I’m somewhat familiar with the general spread of what is considered punk: from the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and the Clash to Operation Ivy and Rancid, to Green Day, the Offspring, and Blink-182, and of course the Christian punk scene in bands like MxPx or Ghoti Hook. I think that’s a fair and representative sample of the landscape of safety pins and ripped jeans and ironic suits and ties and iconoclastic screeds.

But if I’m reading the comment correctly, I believe the sense of it was something along the lines of: Excuse me kind sir, but punk rock was/is often fairly rebellious, anti-Christian, and immoral – how could Christianity be anything remotely similar to the antics of Joey Ramone or Billy Joe Armstrong? Another comment also wondered if this was an offhand tip of the hat to a certain rock band church movement in Seattle full of tattoos and Calvinism. Without saying anything directly about that scene pro or con, I’m happy to make it clear that I’m not interested in Joey Ramone pastors or Billy Joe Armstrong Calvinist dudes. And I’ll circle back around to this point shortly. 

Punk as Iconoclasm
But where I absolutely did intend to point out overlap is in the simple fact that Christianity is iconoclastic – that is, Christianity smashes idols. Christianity stands athwart the pagan cultural norms. The holiness and perfection of God always stand athwart the world, the flesh, and the devil in every culture and every human heart, but the more overtly pagan a culture is/gets the more obviously counter-cultural Christianity is/becomes. This iconoclasm runs from Moses’ showdown with the gods of Egypt to Gideon’s midnight vandalism to Paul’s Mars Hill collision with the altar to the unknown god all the way down to the Reformation bonfires burning papist trinkets and baubles. And now we have an obese Federal Government that makes Jabba the Hut look like some kind of African Olympic marathon runner. The State thinks it is a god, teeming with filing cabinets full of officious paperwork which is encouraged by the breathless chase of the media prostitutes – let’s call them altar boys – and therefore, anyone who actually desires to obey Jesus Christ finds himself increasingly at odds with said Tubby Tom (and yes, for the record, I am fat shaming the federal government). And with every passing day El Federal Lardo insists that the general populace bow and scrape at the shrines to its greasy corpulence. Take the fact that all ye Democratic presidential hopefuls were given an entire day on CNN to speak in hushed and solemn tones about how soon the world will end in a fracking fireball if one of them doesn’t stop people from eating cheese burgers and using plastic straws.

Puff-Faced Nannies
Who are the cranky puritans now? And to be clear: the actual Puritans were joyful, lively Christians. But the slanderous adjective “puritanical” justly applies to the current cadre of leftist puff-faced Nannies. Just listen to them fussing about which pronouns you may use, lecturing you on your carbon footprint, badgering you about your white privilege, nagging you with their censorious pursed lips about the patriarchal residue in a phrase like “hey guys,” and demanding that you kiss the altar of every woman’s right to chop her babies in little pieces at every turn. And what you need to see is that this is every bit as religious and superstitious and idolatrous as the worst abuses of the pre-Exodus Egypt or pre-Reformation Europe.

This makes the fainting fits of the illiterati at the thought of “theocracy” a complete loony farce. We already have a theocracy, man – a nation ruled by false gods and their schizophrenic and delirious cleanliness codes. “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations– ‘Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,’ which all concern things which perish with the using– according to the commandments and doctrines of men?” (Col. 2:20-22)

Witness leftist insanity that bans cigarette smoking and defies federal laws by legalizing marijuana, on the same ballot. Witness mandatory health warnings on alcoholic drinks for pregnant women and the indignant looks a pregnant woman might get while sipping a glass of wine, all while insisting on the right to late-term decapitations, maybe even after the baby is born. And you’re a vile, leprous heretic if you think a little baby should come between a woman and her right to be a career-whore. Witness sex-education teaching children that sex is anything you want it to be, orgasms on demand, hump everything on the hillside, and the simultaneous mass hysteria under the hashtag #metoo and the seething scorn for Mike Pence following the Billy Graham rule. Witness the group think catechism of Darwinism shoved down the throats of children for 13 years, insisting that there is no meaning, only the strong survive, and progress is a matter of random mutation, and you better be good, get good grades, get into a good college, and make a bunch of money because yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

This touch-not, taste-not, ban all-the-things, lefty pantheism desperately needs a calm, cool, and joyfully Protestant punk revolt. This separate-your-trash-and-recycle-on-Fridays or else the racist fires in South America will destroy the world, you carbon-emitting patriarchal cis-gendered bigot B.S. needs a belly laugh and a wet raspberry.

Not Punk Enough
Let me put it this way. The problem with punk is not the rebellion. The problem with punk is the lack of rebellion. Or maybe better: the problem is that punk has not yet been rebellious enough. How about instead of tattoos and body piercings, you do something really rebellious and counter-cultural and get a wedding ring? And if you want to give the egalitarian establishment a serious asthma attack, have the woman promise to “obey” her husband and have your first kid a year later. And do it all before you turn 24 if you can manage it. How about instead of safety pins, you load up on diapers at Costco for the pile of kids you’re raising? How about refusing to send your children to Caesar’s public schools, start a Classical Christian school and plant or join a faithful Bible teaching church and worship the Lord every Sunday in the beauty of holiness, with joy and reverence? How about instead of overpriced, pre-ripped jeans you bought from the Shih Tzu Boutique, you just work hard six days a week until your jeans actually wear out? How about instead of ironic suits and ties and pink hair, you learn to tell good jokes and laugh hard, and read all the old stories around a table full of good food and fine wine, and sing Psalms at the top of your lungs (and learn parts), and pursue actual justice and excellence in your home, in your business, in your church, in your neighborhood. And sure, crank up some tunes on a Friday night and dance like a fool with your wife and kids in the living room.

Conclusion
Turns out keeping your vows to your spouse until you die, raising your children in the Lord, confessing your sins and forgiving quickly, and laughing at all the goodness and glory is a far deeper rebellion than anything the Ramones could have imagined. And the real glory is that it’s actually real, it’s honest, it’s true, and it’s a goodness that goes all the way down by the grace of God and the work of His Spirit.

We serve the God of the Universe, the God who invented sex and cell phones and laughter and mountains and water skiing and music and beer. We serve the God who invented all the best things. Sin is the enemy of it all. Sin is the prude. Sin is the fusser. Sin is the gangrene. Sin is what makes us grow old and grumpy. But grace makes us alive. Grace makes us laugh. Grace lets us start over again (and again) (and again!). As Doug Wilson likes to say, God takes where we are not where we should have been.

And this is because Jesus is forever young. He lives forever and can never grow old. He is also eternally wise and not a mere juvenile. But He is the youthful Spirit of joy and freedom and adventure and new life forever. The Pharisees always come running with their rules and regulations and huffiness and snark, and Jesus always comes not giving a damn. He loves the law of the Lord and those words are a life-giving feast. To know Jesus is to love obedience, and it turns out that obedience to God in a fallen world is the most punk rock you can be.

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Don’t Miss the Most Important Thing

One of the most startling and offensive claims of the New Testament is that religious people must be converted and born again. We often forget who Jesus and the apostles were talking to in their recorded ministries. Most often, they were talking to religious people, people who went to the synagogue on Sabbath, who heard the Scriptures read, who participated in the feasts and tried to keep the law of God. And yet Jesus came to them and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Jesus even insisted on this with a seminary professor of His day, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn. 3:3). Later, Peter preached the same thing in the temple in Jerusalem: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). And so the same message is for us and for every generation. Unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

What does this mean? It means that God Himself must take up residence in you. It means that you need to have a new heart, so that sin no longer has mastery of you. It means a new hope and a new love in Christ filling you such that you want to serve Him with all that you are, that you look forward to the day when all the nations worship Him, and that you long to see Him face to face and be with Him forever.

So, are you born again? Does Christ live in you? Have you died and is your life hidden with Christ in God? Do you know that peace, that joy, that hope? Do not say, well, I’m in Church aren’t I? Do not say, well, I got baptized didn’t I? Do not say, well, I go to a Christian school or my parents are Christians. No, those are all true gifts and true blessings, but only as they nurture a true and living faith. So as we gather for worship this morning, do not miss the most important thing. Do not miss Jesus.

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Reigning over the Dishes

It’s one thing to talk about the gospel, it’s another thing to walk in the gospel, to stand in grace, to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus right where you are today, now. 

For those who are in Christ, these things are true whether we realize it or not, but there is a marked difference between seeing and understanding these realities and not. 

Paul begins the book of Ephesians blessing God for all the glory and grace we have been loaded down with in the gospel, but this praise transitions into a prayer that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places…” (Eph. 1:17-20, my emphasis)

Paul knows that it is easy not to see what is true. It is easy not to know what is the hope of our calling, the riches of the saints, the greatness of His power working in us – the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him at the Father’s right hand. 

In the midst of the trenches of parenting, family tension, health crises, financial instability, heartbreaking loss, the plodding of daily tasks and routines, what do the eyes of your heart see? The beginning of Paul’s prayer summarizes the whole vision as centered on the revelation of the knowledge of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory. The Spirit of wisdom and revelation gives us knowledge of Him and all that we have in Him. If we know Him, if we see Him, we see the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, the greatness of His power working in us who believe — such that we are already raised and seated in heavenly places in and with Him (Eph. 2:6). 

What is that power? It’s the power of the resurrection of Jesus now. And what is that exactly? It’s the power of God’s righteousness, His justice. But how does that work? In other words, how did Jesus rise? “Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it” (Acts 2:24). So this is the deal. The only power that death has is the power of condemnation, guilt for sin. Therefore, when the saints rise in glory, we will rise because it will not be possible for us to be held by death any more because we are innocent, because our sins are washed away. But Paul says that this power is already at work in those who believe. And this is what he prays we will have eyes to see — eyes to see that sin and death have no power over us now, today.

But how is that possible? We still sin. You can see the scars and bruises and craters of sin all around you. You can feel the impulses of sin still writhing inside of you. And this is precisely why it is so hard to see, so hard to believe. But what did Jesus do? He died for that sin. He was crushed for that sin — the very sin that screams in your head, the sin that aches, the sin that plagues your home, your marriage, your workplace, your classroom, your heart and mind. Jesus was betrayed, mocked, scourged, condemned, rejected and bled out for that sin. So like the martyrs in Revelation, we fight and overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by our testimony (Rev. 12:11). And what is that? How do you fight like that? It is the simple, defiant cry of faith that says, Jesus died for this! He died for this bad attitude, this complaining spirit, this angry outburst, this lazy cowardice, this lustful malaise, these rebellious words, these disobedient thoughts, these evil actions, this ugly mess. The Lamb was slain for this, for me. We point at the blood over our doors, and that is our testimony — our only testimony. And the angel of death passes over. Death has no power where the blood of Christ is spread, where sin has been paid for, confessed, and forgiven.

There is an enormous difference between parenting on your own and parenting in the power of the resurrection. There is an enormous difference between going to work on your own and going to work in the knowledge of Him who was raised from the dead. It is one thing to know certain facts on a page; it is another thing entirely to see Jesus, to know His grace for you, and to stand confident in that grace, to sit with Him in the heavenly places, reigning with Him over the dishes, the laundry, the committee meetings, the children, your marriage, your homework, your future, sin, unbelief, even death. So ask God for these eyes to see, eyes to see the power of the resurrection today. Confess your sins, get clean in the blood of Christ, and walk in new obedience like a rock star, like you’re already clean and justified and seated in heavenly places.

Because in Jesus you are.

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The Church & the Word

Psalm 29

Introduction

The Christian faith and the Christian church are glorious results of the Word of God. The voice of God thunders in creation and in the gospel, and then we thunder with His grace — the beauty of His holiness.  

Summary of the Text

Psalm 29 has three parts. First, David issues the command to give glory unto the Lord. The command “give” comes three times: first to the “mighty ones” (literally: sons of the gods), then the command includes “strength,” and finally the command is given with a reason: it is due/owed to His name (Ps. 29:1-2). The psalmist then summarizes the command he is giving: “worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 29:2). 

The second part of the Psalm explains these elements of “might” and “strength” and “beauty” and “glory” all centering on the “voice of the Lord” as a fierce thunder storm (Ps 29:3-9). The word “voice” is actually used a number of times for thunder: in the seventh plague with the hail (Ex. 9:23), and later, when Israel was gathered at the base of Sinai there were “voices/ thunderings” (Ex. 19:16, cf. Rev. 4:5). The Psalmist begins by introducing the thunder storm “over the waters,” his “glory thunders,” His voice is “powerful,” and his voice is full of “beauty/majesty” (Ps. 29:3-4). God’s voice splits cedars in half (Ps. 29:5), and God makes the earth quake, causing it to leap like young oxen (Ps. 29:6). God’s voice also shoots out lightening on the earth (Ps. 29:7). God’s thunder is not limited to Lebanon, He also shakes the wilderness of Kadesh (Ps. 29:8). God’s storm makes the wild animals give birth in panic, and His voice is like a pressure washer that completely strips the forest bare (Ps. 29:9), like with the Red Sea (Ex. 15:8).

Finally, in what might feel like a lurch, the Psalmist describes the voice/storm of the Lord in the temple where everyone shouts “glory!” But when the tabernacle and temple were dedicated, they were filled with glory that made them unapproachable (Ex. 40:34-35, 1 Kgs. 8:11, cf.Rev. 11:19, 15:8). So this is not a lurch at all. On the one hand this is what God’s people do in response to the glory of God and His mighty Word, and on the other hand, the worship of God’s people is as much caused by the voice of the Lord as the rest of the storm. We are the storm. The Psalmist finishes His call to worship, remembering that God was the One who ruled over the Flood – the greatest storm in the history of the world, and He is the one who sits enthroned forever. He gives strength to His people, and therefore He is the one who blesses people with peace (Ps. 29:10-11). 

Centrality of the Word

The center of this Psalm is the power of the Word of God. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth by the Word of His power when His Spirit-wind hovered over the waters (Gen. 1:1), and it is that same powerful Word that upholds all things (Heb. 1:3). His Word thundered at Sinai, but Hebrews says that He now thunders His word directly from Heaven “that the things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:25-27). What this indicates is the fact that God’s storm is not merely destructive, but it is also wonderfully creative, saving, and healing. This Word that created and sustains and thunders from Heaven became flesh and dwelt among us, and John says, “we beheld His glory” (Jn. 1). The center of that glory was the cross and resurrection, where the justice of God was completely satisfied and the mercy of God freely offered. It has pleased God for many centuries now for His Word to go forth in the mouths of men, preaching the gospel, proclaiming the justice and mercy of the cross, splitting the cedar hearts of rebellious men and stripping their arguments bare (Acts 2:37, Lk. 2:35). The Word is a two-edged sword going out of the mouth of Jesus (Rev. 19:15), through the mouths of His servants (Heb. 4:12), conquering sinners. And God’s people shout, “glory!” 

Good Order: Liturgy & Government

Because we want the power of God’s Word, worship must be patterned after God’s clear word. To go off on our own in worship is to insist on impotence, but His voice is where the power and glory are. And His voice says, “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:39, Col. 2:5). The word for order is “taxis” and was used to describe military formations in the ancient world, and this is why we should in principle be committed to a formal or liturgical worship. Casual or informal worship is not obedient worship (Heb. 12:28-29). The New Testament requires our worship to be a spiritual sacrifice of praise, and this too implies careful order. The Old Testament sacrifices were offered very carefully and often in a particular order: sin offering, ascension offering, and peace offering (Lev. 9:22, Num. 6:14-17, Ez. 45:17). We call this basic shape of worship Covenant Renewal Worship. But Paul’s concern is principally with clarity (1 Cor. 14). When the Word of God is clear and understandable, God’s Voice thunders with grace and truth. 

The same word is also used to describe the “order” of the Levites (Lk. 1:8) and priesthood (Heb. 7:11-21). So our good order is also guarded by the Church through faithful church government. “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you” (Tit. 1:5, cf. 1 Tim. 3). If we want the glory of the Lord to fill our worship and thunder in our cities, we need godly, qualified men in office. While all of the qualifications for elder/deacon are important, perhaps the most neglected is the order and holiness in his home. “If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination” (Tit. 1:6). “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). Related, God’s people honor and obey their elders (1 Tim. 5:17, Heb. 13:7, 17). 

Church Discipline

Finally, there is no storm of God’s glory where there is no discipline. Church discipline begins in every believer’s heart by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, through confession of sin and repentance (Lk. 6:41, Gal. 6:1). Most church discipline is informal and takes place in the day to day communion of the saints. Love that covers a multitude of sins is actually part of this: hot grace breaks cold, hard hearts. And never stop praying. But the Bible is also clear that some sins need to be confronted and rebuked. “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him” (Lk. 17:3). You should ordinarily go to your brother in private, seeking to gain your brother (Mt. 18:15), and the principles of justice apply (2-3 witnesses, due process). Sometimes public sins may need to be publicly confronted (Gal. 2:14, 1 Tim. 5:20). A church that does not fight for holiness does not really love the beauty of holiness.      

Conclusion: The Lord of Hosts 

In the Exodus narrative the word “armies” is used five times, but the really striking thing is that it never applies to the Egyptians. It always applies to the children of Israel. So this is God’s way: He sees us as His armies, His hosts, and we fight by praising His name, feasting on His Word and at His table, by baptism, by confessing sin, forgiving one another, by building homes, working hard, feasting, and rejoicing in His glorious grace. By the grace and power of His word, He makes us (and remakes us) into the beautiful storm of His holiness. 

Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash

Alien Comm 101: Relationships with People from a Different Planet

Introduction

[These are notes for a talk I gave at the 2019 Post College Life Conference. The audio for this talk can be found here.]

In some ways this talk and my talk this afternoon about singles in the church are two sides of the same coin. Please consider this talk and the next talk as going together. Apply what I say in this talk to that one and vice versa. 

By Grace Through Faith

We are Christians, and so we want to think and act like Christians in every area of life. This includes how we think about, plan, and execute our dealings with members of the opposite sex. But it’s one thing to say we ought to do this, and another thing entirely to actually do it. Another way to say this is that you want all of your relationships to be by grace through faith. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10).

Some of the good works that God has prepared beforehand include activities, friendships, Bible studies, worship, dates, courtships, and marriage to a member of the opposite sex. But the only way your relationships will be part of that work of art – created in Christ Jesus – is if they are pursued by grace through faith, which means completely surrendered to Christ. All of our problems are caused by ignoring Christ entirely or else beginning with Christ and then adding our own wisdom/works to the equation at some point. Paul recognized this temptation with the Galatians: “If you have begun by the Spirit, will you now be made perfect by the flesh” (Gal. 3:3)?

Crucify the Flesh (Hate Impurity)

Your own wisdom/works apart from walking by grace through faith will inevitably be full of your flesh. The word flesh doesn’t necessarily mean “physical body” or “sexual” (although it can), but rather it refers to the principles of the Fall that remain in believers (mind, body, and spirit). Before getting to some of the practical particulars about navigating life between the sexes, we need to understand how high the stakes are. We live in a culture that is deeply divided, and the divide is widening by the day, between those who are loyal to the world as God actually made it and is redeeming it and those who want to re-make the world according to their own whims and lusts. While for many decades this war has been waged under the guise of “freedom” from “harsh fundamentalisms” of various stripes, the fact that this war is simply against God, marriage, the family, children, and Christian liberty is becoming clearer and clearer by the minute (e.g. “bake the cake, bigot!”). So if you want in on this fight, you need to understand that it runs right down the middle of every human heart: “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those those thing which are above, where Christ is, siting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth… Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry…” (Col. 3:1-2, 5). So confess your sins, get forgiveness, confront sin where necessary, and let love cover lots of the bumps and bruises.

The practical suggestions and recommendations that follow will only help if you understand these first two principles. The practical suggestions are like a steering wheel and pedals in a car, but if you don’t have the engine of the Spirit under the hood, you will not make it very far. 

Walk Like a Ninja: Some Generalizations & Cautions

Boys and girls are different. But the bible clearly teaches that God made man in His image, male and female. So, despite the title of my talk, we are not actually from different planets, even if it seems that way. We may be from different countries and speak somewhat different dialects, but we are made in the same image. This is our ground for deep reverence for one another. Add to this, the fact that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is our ground for deep compassion for another. We have a common problem called sin and death. And finally, we have a common Savior, a common forgiveness, the same Spirit is given to all who trust in Jesus, and we have been made joint-heirs of eternal glory. This is our ground for hope. 



But boys and girls are different. God made women to be attractive, and He made men to notice. Adam said that Eve was “flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones,” and Paul makes it explicit that woman is the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:7). God made women beautiful. This is their glory. God made men strong. This is their glory. And it is not a sin to notice this and give thanks to God for this. But sin warps everything, including this. Men sinfully desire. And women sinfully desire to be desired. And these (sinful and godly) desires and our attempts to master them infiltrate all our dealings. When Paul warned Timothy, he urged him to treat “older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity” (1 Tim. 5:2). And the related command to women is found earlier in the letter: “that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works” (1 Tim. 2:9-10). Of course the same commands apply to the other sex as well, but the fact that we need to say that out loud reveals how far we’ve come. 



Paul instructs wives to respect their husbands and husbands to love their wives (Eph. 5), and this is not because wives do not need to love their husbands or that husbands do not need to respect their wives. But it’s because men naturally communicate in terms of respect, and women naturally communicate in terms of love. This is fine and good as far as it goes, but it can make for miscommunication and misunderstanding, even outside of marriage. A man showing a woman respect may be mistaken as showing romantic interest. If he says you have a good throwing arm, he may simply mean that he thinks you have a good throwing arm. A woman showing a man friendship/care may also be mistaken for showing romantic interest when all that was meant was an act of kindness. Add to this the tendency that men have to be mission oriented and for women to be relationship oriented. Lewis says that men tend to be friends side by side working on a project together, while women tend to be friends face to face. Men tend to assume everything is fine (unless it obviously isn’t), and women tend to assume something is wrong if there hasn’t been regular affirmation. All of this is reason to keep opposite sex friendships warm but distant. You can’t be “just friends.” So don’t waste a bunch of time overthinking it.  



Choose your friends very carefully (Prov. 12:26). Let your closest friends be blood relatives or wiser, older members of the same sex (parents, older brothers, sisters). And make sure your closest friends are people who are willing to wound you in love (Prov. 27:6, 17). Remember Psalm 1 and choose those you walk, stand, and sit with wisely. It may be that there is a progression of intimacy there, but this may also merely be a poetic way of describing different human scenarios, all significant and important: work, play, friendships, etc. Related to this is the fifth commandment. 



Guard your hearts. And I mean this in at least two directions. First, be honest with yourself about your intentions and emotions. Don’t lie to yourself, God, or your friends about anything. And this is why you need good friends who would ask you straight whiskey questions about what you’re doing and why. Second, do not let your imaginations run wild. Lust takes different forms, but it’s all covetous and full of lies.



Don’t sleep with someone emotionally if you’re not allowed to go to bed with them physically. But connect the dots here: don’t act like a couple if you aren’t, or don’t intend to become a couple. This includes things like being team leaders for something, organizing regular outings together with friends, leading a Bible study together, going places together alone regularly (“we’re just carpooling”). God designed the world with a certain kind of gravity, a current that is pulling in a particular direction. Even when everyone is being good and pure, that current is pulling you. And your emotions/bodies are designed by God (and complicated by the Fall) to go somewhere. Unless you are a eunuch, you cannot become close emotionally and have no challenges. And the challenges may not always be sexual. Sometimes people have difficulty getting along or keep running into weird communication snarls for the same reason: you weren’t designed to be this close. 



Related: Be very careful professionally. Egalitarianism has swept through our culture such that we don’t even know when we’re in danger anymore. Don’t do anything alone with a member of the opposite sex where there are not lots of windows and witnesses. This is for everyone’s protection. If you are a real estate agent, do not take a woman alone into a house. If you are a plumber, do not work on someone’s house alone if it is only you and a woman alone together in the house. Do not work late at the office or go on business trips alone with a member of the opposite sex. Get an assistant. Invite someone else on to your team. Or get reassigned.   

Conclusion

Keep the gospel central. You were created in Christ Jesus for good works. That’s where you want to be, and that means walking by grace through faith in obedience to Jesus. It means surrendering everything to Him. On the one hand this means being biblically wise in all your dealings, and on the other hand, this means giving it all to the Lord and not overthinking it. You do what you can do to be wise and holy, and then have fun and refuse to be boxed in by the fear of man or the future or man-made expectations.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash