Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 57

The Secret to Christian Joy

The secret to Christian joy is having a clean heart.

John wrote his first letter so that all who read it would have fellowship with them, and that fellowship is with the Father and the Son, and this fellowship is where the fullness of joy is. John explains that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. This means you can’t be in fellowship with the Light of God and hold on to any darkness. But the good news is that if you walk in the light and you let the Light expose your sins so that you can confess your sins and be forgiven, then we have fellowship with God and one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

So this is the secret to having Christian joy. The fullness of joy is being in fellowship with God, who is all light, all the time. In Him there is no darkness at all: there are no shadows. In the course of our lives there will be hardships, and we certainly sin, but those shadows cannot stick to us if we stay in the Light. Jesus says that the joy He gives is the kind of joy that no one can take away from you. This is because no one can take away your fellowship with God; no one can take away your clean heart. 

But sometimes true Christians sin and their joy can be diminished. True Christian joy can never be lost, but if you aren’t confessing your sins, the joy of your salvation can become muffled. Your filters can get clogged. But if you confess your sins, God will restore to you the joy of your salvation, and with a clean heart, you will breathe the clean mountain air of God’s delight. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

Do you want Christian joy? Then confess your sins and get a clean heart. 

Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

When Your New Eyes Can’t See

Introduction

In what follows, I want to be clear that I am only speaking for myself and not in any official capacity for either Christ Church or New St. Andrews College.

Many folks may be aware of the fact that Moscow, Idaho has seen its share of different leaders and teachers over the years who have come and gone, some of whom have moved in decidedly different directions than the core mission and vision we have at Christ Church and New St. Andrews College. One teacher was Peter Leithart who was a professor of theology at NSA for a number of years and was the founding pastor of Trinity Reformed Church. My wife and I were founding members of Trinity when it started in 2003, and later I served as a pastor alongside Peter for a number of years beginning in 2008. Through Peter, I and many others were introduced to James B. Jordan, and perhaps centrally his book Through New Eyes, an introduction to a typological reading of Scripture, and “developing a biblical view of the world,” aimed in a particularly sacramental and liturgical direction. The ministry of James Jordan is called Biblical Horizons (“BH”). There is a private BH email list serve that I was party to for around 14 years, and for many years there was an annual BH conference, which I spoke at one year. Jordan’s work and that annual conference has more recently been closely associated with the work of Theopolis Institute in Birmingham, Alabama where Peter Leithart now serves as president. In addition to the work of Jordan and Leithart, Jeff Meyers was a third teacher/pastor whose work on covenant renewal worship in the book The Lord’s Service has become very influential in these circles, including my own studies and ministry. 

There are elements of all three men’s work that I remain extremely grateful for to this day and continue to believe are helpful and biblically sound. But over the last few years, I have had increasing misgivings, and I want to go on record now stating that I believe there are some serious weaknesses in what I would call the “BH paradigm.” I’m posting this publicly because of the public nature of my own involvement in some of these matters, and addressing public teaching publicly is sometimes good and necessary (Gal. 2:11).

When There’s No Nature to Regenerate

The central theological issue concerns the doctrine of regeneration. James Jordan wrote an exploratory essay a number of years ago entitled Thoughts on Sovereign Grace and Regeneration: Some Tentative Explorations. As the years went by, Jordan and others closely associated with him have largely adopted those thoughts on regeneration. The main thesis is that instead of regeneration being a permanent change of an individual’s nature in time and space, regeneration is viewed in more covenantal terms, defining it as an ongoing relationship with God beginning at baptism, wherein one wrestles with God (hopefully) to the end of life, but without a permanent change of nature in this life and such that some may ultimately reject this regeneration and fall away. The “change of nature” on this view is merely the change in relationship to God via covenant membership. This is because Jordan and proponents deny that there is such a thing as a “nature” that can be changed in itself. They would argue that our “nature” only consists in our relationships, and primarily how we relate to God.

While it is true that the word “regeneration” is used in covenantal ways in Scripture, the language of “new birth” and being “born again” are also clearly used in a more instantaneous, soteriological way, and with the notion of a permanent change of nature, going from children of wrath to children of grace, from the Adamic nature to a new nature in Christ, and that change being permanent and part of God’s guarantee of our perseverance to the end. Regeneration relates to generation, which is the question, “who is your father?” But the answer to that question is not merely a matter of who you are related to, or whose name is on the birth certificate. It is also fundamentally a matter of what kind of heart you have, what kind of tree you are, what you actually are in yourself.

It should be pointed out that everyone in this conversation is a Calvinist, and so even those who hold to the Jordan thesis hold that everyone who perseveres in wrestling with the Spirit does so because of the decretive will of God and His sovereign grace. But I have come to believe that this distinction has enormous downstream effects both theologically and pastorally. There is something extremely crucial for preaching and pastoral ministry about holding to the definitive state of a man before God. Either a man is regenerate or not, and those pigs who got baptized and went back to wallowing in the mire never were anything other than pigs, even though it will be worse for them (2 Pet. 2:21-22).

But this is not merely a theological or theoretical matter because as Douglas Wilson has pointed out, without a nature, we do not have an argument against those who want to say that boys can be girls or girls can be boys. The thing to notice here initially is the emphasis on relationship over nature that muddles definitions. In what follows, I am not arguing for a direct causation from this theological problem to all the others. Rather, I’m claiming that there’s something in the air, a number of related problems and weaknesses all in a cluster, and faithful men should take notice.

Leithart on the End of Protestantism

Peter Leithart’s End of Protestantism project a few years back was another unsettling development along similar lines. While the book (barely) managed to avoid the worst errors I feared, suffering primarily from a poor title, a subsequent editorial in Fox News under the same banner made it clear where this was heading, which is not Roman Catholicism for most (as some might fear), but a squishy sacramental-liturgical Protestant ecumenism – a warmed over Anglicanism that aims at the faithfulness of the African branch but ends up with the British and American compromises (more on that momentarily). The primary problem here being an overemphasis on external, sacramental-liturgical unity over true born again, Spirit-wrought unity in Christ. Meanwhile, my pastoral experience leading worship in my (previous) congregation that pretty much followed Jeff Meyer’s suggestions for covenant renewal worship to a tee was beginning to raise pastoral questions. I was seeing troubling signs in the congregation that some were interpreting the robes and collars and other liturgical forms as a sort of Anglicanism-lite and once again indications that extra-biblical, external forms were taking on far greater significance and importance than they ought to, and which naturally opened the door to varying lapses in personal holiness.   

Peter Leithart on Revoice

The next shoe to drop was when it came to my attention this last Spring that Peter Leithart had “blurbed” Wesley Hill’s book Spiritual Friendship, part history of friendship in the church, but also part “Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian” (the subtitle). Wesley Hill writes: 

“I needed to explore how my being gay might involve what a thoughtful friend of mine has called a special “genius for friendship.” Genius doesn’t just mean intellectual aptitude or brilliance; it can equally refer to a talent, a knack, a particular flair for something, or a certain kind of practical wisdom, so that we say things like, “He’s a genius when it comes to baking cakes,” or “She’s a tightrope-walking genius.” Might there be, my friend asked, a way in which gay people have, whether by natural inclinations or through childhood trial and error or some combination of the two (among other factors), a sort of enviable insight into how to foster and enhance same-sex friendships? If so, part of this may be owing to the skills gay kids have to learn if they plan to survive middle school: skills of self-restraint and creative resolution when they develop a crush on their best friend, self-control in speech and action as they try to navigate such a tricky situation without cutting themselves off from relationships, and balance and delicacy in tending relationships even when they retain their potential for messiness. 

Despite what you might conclude from cultural sound bites, being gay isn’t only, or even primarily, about what people choose to do in bed. Even for straight people, sexuality is broader and more mysteriously elusive than that. While it can’t be reduced simply to a generic impulse for relationships of any kind, which would render it synonymous with “relationality” or “capacity for companionship,” sexuality also shouldn’t be abbreviated as “whatever we do with our genitals.”

In my experience, at least, being gay colors everything about me, even though I’m celibate. It’s less a separable piece of my experience, like a shelf in my office, which is distinguishable from the other shelves, and more like the proverbial drop of ink in a glass of water: not identical with the water, but also not entirely distinct from it either. Being gay is, for me, as much a sensibility as anything else: a heightened sensitivity to and passion for same-sex beauty that helps determine the kind of conversations I have, which people I’m drawn to spend time with, what novels and poems and films I enjoy, the particular visual art I appreciate, and also, I think, the kind of friendships I pursue and try to strengthen. I don’t imagine I would have invested half as much effort in loving my male friends, and making sacrifices of time, energy, and even money on their behalf, if I weren’t gay. My sexuality, my basic erotic orientation to the world, is inescapably intertwined with how I go about finding and keeping friends.” (P. 80-81)

Endorsing Spiritual Friendship, Peter Leithart wrote, “Medieval monks expressed their love for one another with what to us is cringe-inducing intimacy, and not so long ago Christians still entered formal bonds of friendship by taking vows that sound like marriage vows. We don’t do that anymore, with our commitment to uncommitted freedom, our turnover habits, our sexualization of everything and everyone, and our resignation to loneliness. Wesley Hill’s very personal book is an elegant, theologically rich plea on behalf of the love of friendship that uncovers fresh ways to improvise on a lost Christian tradition of committed spiritual friendship.” Peter gives no caveats or warnings about what one may find in Hill’s book. For anyone struggling with homosexual temptation or sin, especially for anyone who has been familiar with Biblical Horizons, Peter Leithart, or Theopolis Institute, one could not be faulted for believing that Peter and Theopolis support Wesley Hill’s brand of addressing the challenge of being a “Celibate Gay Christian,” more recently popularized in the Revoice conferences. 

Now I happen to know that Peter does not support or endorse the “Spiritual Friendship” project as a whole or the Revoice conference that has come to be closely aligned with it (Spiritual Friendship was published in 2015, and the first Revoice Conference was held in 2018). But the blog “Spiritual Friendship.org,” jointly founded by Hill has been open about these themes since its start in 2012. The Spiritual Friendship blog folks held a pre-conference at the first Revoice conference, and Wesley Hill has been one of the prominent speakers at Revoice. And I want to be clear that my concern is not that Peter endorsed a book by somebody associated with Revoice. My concern is that Peter endorsed a book that explicitly argues for the very same things as Revoice. I have heard reports that Peter is working on some sort of statement clarifying his views. But it has been months now since I urged Peter to do so, and therefore that sort of clarification is clearly not a matter of great urgency for him. So as it stands, Theopolis Institute and Peter Leithart are on the back of a book endorsing Hill’s suggested path to helping “a Celibate Gay Christian” find love in the Church and clearly not at all in a biblical way. Notice once again: the emphasis on relationships (“friendship”) while missing glaring moral problems.  

Jeff Meyers & the Missouri Presbytery on Revoice

Finally, it came to my attention that the recent Missouri Presbytery study committee on Revoice was appointed by Jeff Meyers, the moderator of the presbytery at that time (he is no longer moderator). The make-up of the committee included a strong representation of those already committed to Revoice and similar projects. My point is not to accuse Jeff Meyers of supporting Revoice or similar movements. I very much suspect that he is not a fan. 

My point is that Jeff Meyers is not seeing clearly. My point is that Peter Leithart is not seeing clearly. And the irony is deep and appalling since they would both point to the seminal book by their mentor James Jordan Through New Eyes as a cornerstone in their thinking and study and teaching on the Bible. But these “new eyes” are not working well. If your new eyes cannot see the plays being run on the church, your new eyes need newer eyes. If these new eyes have become instrumental in welcoming and normalizing homosexual identity in the church, even if completely unintentionally, those eyes need glasses. It’s no excuse to say that you didn’t see the ditch, the potholes, the bridge out over the river. The shepherds of the flock must have good eyes for guarding the flock otherwise they really are the blind leading the blind.

Checking Your New Eyes

The central thesis of Through New Eyes is that the Bible is written typologically, that God is the sovereign author of all of existence, and therefore all of existence means what He says it means. Therefore, rocks and stars and trees and bread and wine are not merely things, they are also symbols and types. They are signs that point beyond themselves to what God is doing in the world and in various ways they may carry or convey or communicate those meanings in Scripture, in history, and in our lives. When a bunch of these grammar level connections are made, reading the Bible covenantally from Genesis to Revelation demonstrates that many of these signs fill up with more and more meaning as they come to their fulfillment in Jesus and the New Covenant. And there’s a great deal of this that is just plain, vanilla Reformed theology (if somewhat neglected in recent decades).

Most Reformed theologians have made the connection between baptism and circumcision at least partially by typology. The New Testament writers say that the Flood was a type of baptism and so was the crossing of the Red Sea (1 Cor. 10, 1 Pet. 3). I still find this broad typological hermeneutic compelling, but something has gone terribly wrong when you can’t see the queer guy right in front of you. A couple of years ago, I wrote an article in which I stated my concern that many who would otherwise have no problem tracing the typology of robes or the sign of the cross or incense, could suddenly become strict grammatical-historical literalists when it came to a suggested typology of pink hair and gender confusion. The whole point of reading the Bible this way is to give us the ability to read the world rightly, but when typology is primarily about deep weird connections and liturgical minutiae, one begins to suspect that it’s more about entertainment and being “in the know” than Heaven and Hell and life and death exegesis of God’s holy word. Something has gone terribly wrong when the raison d’être of your ministry is picking up on the nuances of typology, but you’re accidentally endorsing or inadvertently helping to protect men who really want to sodomize other men but can’t and so instead will cultivate life-long (celibate) intimate friendships with them, while remaining pastors and leaders in the church. 

One of the ways you should test your new eyes is by checking how well they help you see. And there are some significant blind spots here. While I would be very grateful for a clarifying statement from Peter Leithart repudiating his endorsement of Wesley Hill’s book Spiritual Friendship, the fact that it has taken him this long indicates that he has a blind spot about the urgency of doing so. Even if Jeff Meyer’s appointment of the members of the Missouri Presbytery study committee was completely innocent, the fact that it has now been shown to have been a stacked committee should be cause for a public apology, especially given the report that was produced. But I doubt he sees that.  

My Repentance: Federal Vision & BH

The first thing we should do when we realize that we haven’t been seeing things clearly is to own that fact. Then, after that, especially when we have been in positions of leadership, we should warn others. 

So in the first instance, I want to publicly acknowledge that I have been heavily influenced by these men. I wrote a commentary on the book of Job, A Son for Glory, that is in a commentary series subtitled Through New Eyes. I don’t know of any glaring errors in that book at present, but I am issuing a surgeon general’s warning regarding its contents. Be aware that while I still hold many of the basic interpretations of that book, it may contain problems or weaknesses. Related, I have not yet had an opportunity to work my way through my blog archives, but I fully expect to find posts that were heavily influenced by my “Biblical Horizons” education and associations. This would also include taking various “Federal Vision” stances for granted. 

While I still believe many of the critics of Federal Vision did not always understand what they were criticizing, I do now believe that there was a great deal of ambiguous and pastorally unhelpful and irresponsible speculative theology passed off under the heading “Federal Vision,” related to the Biblical Horizons tendency to do theology by free association rather than careful exegesis. To the extent that some of my friends were led into Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, wishy-washy Anglicanism, or worse, by my own irresponsible participation in that project or related speculations, my sincere apologies. While this hardly does justice to the problems and confusions caused, please consider this a retraction of my public and published work that has participated in the Biblical Horizons and Federal Vision muddle. 

Closely related, looking back, I can see danger signs at various points that I did not heed, and some of my friends even warned me, and I dismissed those warnings. To those who saw the danger signs and tried to point them out, to those whom I dismissed, please forgive me.  

To anticipate one possible objection, I would note that our church’s college ministry hosted Sam Allberry for an event entitled “Sexual Confusion: Who are you?” back in 2014. While I have expressed strong disagreement with Sam at points, Sam has remained one of the more biblically careful speakers/writers on homosexual temptation and has distanced himself from the leaders of Revoice, as evidenced by his willingness to sign the Nashville Statetement. But without speaking for anyone else, I think it is safe to say that had we known then what we know now about the entire lay of the land, there would have been more to discuss than we realized at the time. Nevertheless, I met Sam when he visited Moscow, and I have kept up an acquaintance here and there with him, and to his great credit he has remained a friend of ours, responding to questions and criticisms graciously, and occasionally sharing the material coming out of Moscow. All that to say, while we would likely do things a bit different today if we had it to do over, Sam is in a somewhat different category from most. 

Some of my critics have sometimes urged me to admit when I was wrong and have expressed varying degrees of frustration with me for refusing to admit I was wrong, when I didn’t think I was. But here I am on record admitting I was wrong. And unfortunately, many will likely be upset with me for doing so, accusing me of being divisive or disrespectful or worse. 

One other brief word to those who know me and Peter well and know our history together. It’s a terrible thing to need to write something like this, and it could be taken as vicious or backstabbing. But you should know that I have attempted to raise these concerns directly to him previously, and I have also sought to do so in respectful ways, always with gratitude for his kindness to me over the years. I do not bear Peter any ill will, and it is love for him and the truth the motivates this. I don’t really know the way forward from here, but I do not believe it serves anyone well to paper over these serious differences. 

Conclusion

I have counseled others in the SBC and PCA that nothing short of a holy ruckus will save those institutions from the rot in their bones. They have stage 4 cancer, and they need the strongest chemo there is. But I would be remiss to counsel table turning, bridge burning, and rejecting all polite consensus building if I were not willing to do the same. I’m not a member of either of those denominations, but I believe my own associations have done their part in feeding the cancer in those denominations. 

So I repent, and here I am calling my brothers in the BH world and those associated with BH in the CREC to recognize that something is wrong. I fully believe that there are salvageable elements of what we have been taught and studied over the last number of years. I still think that the way Jordan and Leithart analyze biblical texts is frequently very helpful and stimulating (e.g. Primeval Saints, A House for My Name, From Silence to Song). I continue worshipping weekly (and happily) in a congregation that uses a simplified covenant renewal form of worship, with no plans or inclinations to change. But despite those good things, we should not go on pretending that these are good eyes. These eyes are not as good as we thought, brothers. Let’s admit that we have been part of the problem, repent, and ask the Lord to give sight to our blind eyes. We need glasses. We need the Holy Spirit’s Lasik surgery. We need Jesus to spit on some dirt and rub it in our eyes.

I know I am not the first one or the only one to point out some of these weaknesses, but I know how hard it can be to admit it. I know the justifications, the excuses, the dismissals, the biblical-theological dodges and feints that we have practiced. I know what it can feel like to seem trapped. Maybe it finally feels like you’ve made it to a place of stability in your church, in your theological journey. Maybe you can imagine the disruption agreeing with this would cause with your friends, on your session, in your family. It can seem like I’m the troublemaker, like this sort of disruption is anything but helpful. But Jesus called us to take up our crosses and follow Him. He called us to love Him above all else, to be willing to lose friends and family for His sake. He says that if we say that we can see, we are actually blind, but if we know that we are blind, He will make us see. 

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” – C.S. Lewis

Photo by Nonsap Visuals on Unsplash

Worship Realignment

The reason we need to worship every Lord’s Day is because we need our priorities realigned. We need a spiritual tune up. We are complex creatures, and so this is necessarily a complex matter. Our loves need to be aligned with God’s loves. Our hatred needs to be calibrated to God’s hatred. Our desires need to be reoriented. Our values need to be reset. Our perception of reality needs a refresh. The world, the flesh, and the devil are busy coming at us with lies and distortions, and we have sinned. We have logs in our eyes.

How important is that situation at work? How much time should you give to that Facebook discussion? How much should you care about local politics? Are you spending enough time with the kids? Movies? Reading? Camping? There are so many good things in this world, so many potential distractions, so many needs, so many challenges, so much confusion, so much sin. How do you know what you should do? Sometimes we’d all like a detailed script for our lives from God, with minute by minute instructions. 

But God wants us to grow up into wisdom. He wants us to depend upon Him. To pray and talk to Him about all of it, to confess our sins and repent of them, to read His word, and learn to walk with Him. And the center of all of that is meeting with Him here, together with His people, on the Lord’s Day, and what we are here to do? We are here to worship Him. So this is what we need. We need to worship Him. When we worship God, we become more like Him. When we worship Him, we are changed a little more into the particular reflection of Him that we were created to be. 

So as a minister of the gospel, I summons you to worship Your King now. Come before Him with joy and trembling. Come before Him in all humility and love, and surrender all that you are to Him. Cry out to Him, praise Him, and ask Him for His Spirit, for His wisdom, for His grace. And you are most welcome.

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The Gospel for Classical Christian Schools

[These are my notes for a talk I gave at the recent Logos Teacher Training 2019]

Introduction

Perhaps the only institution that is often more dangerous to Christian faith than a Christian school, is the Christian Church. It’s one thing not to know God and to know it, but it’s another thing to not know God all while pretending you do and spending your days telling other people that they really ought to know Him too. Of course this can happen with high handed hypocrisy or high handed sins (e.g. adultery, unrepentant porn, lying). But some of the greatest dangers in this regard are more subtle, sins like anxiety and complaining. This sins can undermine a Christian school, all cleverly disguised as “prayer requests” and “sharing concerns.” While God draws straight with our crooked lines, great evil is done by people claiming the name of Christ who may be able to quote Bible verses backwards who nevertheless give off vibes of fear and fussing and panic and complaining about every problem. I want to work through this material answering two questions: What are we doing here? And what do we do now?

What’s the Problem?

The problem is sin, and this problem cuts straight through the entire history of the world, the whole human race, and every human heart. So whether we are talking about mass illiteracy, opioid addictions, depression and self-harm, abuse, abortion, divorce, the homo gestapo, the problem is sin. In other words, there is plenty to be worried about, plenty to fear, plenty to complain about (humanly speaking). And on top of that one of your fellow teachers is a real piece of work. One of the board members is a problem. And you have a couple of boys in your class that are probably headed to the penitentiary. This problem is a “natural” one, and what I mean is that sin infects all of nature: creation groans and we humans have a nature problem. In Matthew 7:15-23, Jesus uses three images that consign us to a particular nature (wolves/sheep, good/bad trees, and true/false prophets). You cannot do other than what you are. You cannot teach a turtle to fly. You cannot coax a thorn bush to produce grapes. This is why we have problems. This is why the Bible uses the word regeneration – unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Jn. 3, 1 Pet. 1). Men have to be given a new nature. Or to flip it around, we have to be given a father-transplant. Jesus said that the reason the Pharisees hated Him was because they did the works of their father, the devil (Jn. 8:38-44). In other words, the problem (all of them) is humanly impossible, and so we must be always alert and on guard against the innate human tendency to attempt to hot-wire salvation. This can happen when we try to dress up wolves in sheep clothing (even short, cute wolves), to put grapes on thorn trees with scotch tape, to substitute Christian rhetoric for real fruit. This can also happen when we look to the world for solutions to our problems: new curriculum, new diet, new educational fad, new seating arrangement (even if some of those things may be helpful at points). There are particularly fierce warnings in Scripture for teachers (Matt. 18:6, Js. 3:1). So what are we doing here? We are determined to face the problem. The Great Commission is marching orders against this sin problem, and the Great Commission includes teaching. What do we do now? Believe the gospel and obey Jesus where we are.

The Solution

The solution is two-fold. Actually, it’s just one thing with two elements to it. The one thing is Christ crucified. The first element is you knowing Christ crucified. In fact there is a sense in which you must know nothing but Christ crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God, and this means that fundamentally, He is the only lamb, the only natural sheep. Everyone else is or was a wolf, a thorn bush, a loudmouthed hypocrite. He is the lamb slain for wolves, the only good tree cut down for rotten trees, the only true man condemned in the place of the false men and liars. If we are Christians, every one of us were those things by nature, and that old nature, although it has been defeated, still needs to be crucified (Col. 3:1). So what are we doing? We are believing this fundamental truth. Christ is the lamb of God who takes away our sins. The solution to our problems is not fundamentally a new diet, a new lesson plan, a new curriculum, a new administration, a new board, or a long vacation. The solution is a new heart, a new nature. And this results in a joy that cannot be taken away from you and a peace that passes all understanding (Phil. 4). What are we doing? We are serving Christ. This will of necessity also mean that you are serving families, administers, students, boards, and communities, but do not lose sight of the fact that in the first instance, you are serving Christ (or you are not). 

And the second element is the announcement of Christ crucified to all wolves, thorn trees, and hypocrites. And this task is nothing short of preaching in a grave yard, prophesying to dry bones, telling them to arise and live (Ez. 37). The problem is humanly impossible and so is the solution. Men are not reborn by blood, nor of the will of the flesh, or the will of man, or sitting in chapel, or memorizing Bible verses, Latin paradigms, or tucking their shirts in, but only by the power of God (Jn. 1:13). It is not up to us to teach blind eyes to see or deaf ears to hear or dead hearts to beat, but it is up to us to tell them to anyway. And when I say “them,” I mean all of them: teachers, staff, students, and parents. This is because the Living God gives life through the instrument of people believing, living, and explaining the gospel. So what do we do now? Tell the truth about sin, the cross and resurrection, forgiveness, joy, and believe and obey the Bible. 

Conclusion

To be a Christian school must at bare minimum mean at least two things. First, that we, as teachers and administrators are Christians, and this means knowing and loving this gospel, this good news for ourselves. We are committed to knowing nothing else, so much as we know Christ and Him crucified. He is our life. This means cultivating joy and peace in our own lives, quite apart from anyone or anything else. John specifically points to confession of sin as the source of fellowship and joy (1 Jn. 1). If you have a backlog of unconfessed sin, your joy is going to be low and limited. Your peace is going to be stifled. One of the central Christian duties is rejoicing always and being content in every situation (Phil. 4). God hates whining and complaining. Do you know Christ? Then what is a difficult student? What is a difficult co-worker? Give thanks and rejoice. 

And second, more important than anything else is that whatever we teach, we want to constantly be pointing to Christ and Him crucified, in the midst of all the other good things we teach. And I want to frame this carefully. On the one hand, a bunch of perfectly memorized Latin paradigms, rhetorical sophistication, or logical prowess will not matter in Hell. On the other hand, math facts taught with simple Christian joy really is a profoundly Christian education. Praising God’s greatness when studying history or science really is a Christian education. So the point is not that you have to turn every lesson into a gospel presentation. Sometimes that will be the right thing, but if you actually did that, you’d probably be in violation of your curriculum objectives (at some point). The point is that when you know you have been forgiven and that you are serving Christ, these tools (math and science and logic and Latin) are anointed with the peace and joy of Christ and become mighty for pulling down strongholds of unbelief and facing every problem.

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How to (not) be Conservative or How to Get Wet Socks

Just started reading Roger Scruton’s book How To Be A Conservative, and while there’s a good bit that commends itself to the reader, three chapters in and he’s already struggling with the relationship between religious and national loyalty and allegiance. Of course this is nothing new, and so much of the conservative conversation continues to circle around this question.

The chapter opens by connecting some dots brilliantly, essentially pointing out that the World Wars were the culmination of the French Revolution. And the widespread conclusion by many was that nationalism was the culprit. Bonapart’s mad dash across the continent succeeded in spreading a rash of romantic nationalism across Europe, a virus that Germany eventually contracted. Thus the United Nations and later the European Union were born of that anti-nationalistic mission. Scruton asks whether that was right: “nationalism, as an ideology, is dangerous in just the way that ideologies are dangerous. It occupies the space vacated by religion, and in so doing so excites the true believer both to worship the national idea and to seek in it for what it cannot provide — the ultimate purpose of life, the way of redemption, and the consolation for all our woes” (32).

I think Scruton is right about this. There is no way of ultimately vacating the space of religion. Every attempt will only welcome a new place holder, or what we would call a new god. So Scruton rightly recognizes this tendency, and he rightly credits the Enlightenment with the spreading assumption that we keep our religious sentiments out of politics: “To put it bluntly, religion, in our society, has become a private affair, which makes no demands of the public as a whole” (32). But he wrongly makes peace with this settlement. He basically accepts this privatization of religion as a political necessity. He say nations need an identity, and since different religions create disagreement, “democracies need a national rather than a religious or ethnic ‘we’… Its law is territorial rather than religious and invokes no source of authority higher than the intangible assets that its people share” (33-34).

In other words, even though Scruton sees the tendency of nationalism and other ideologies to occupy the space vacated by religion, he is still committed to the basic Enlightenment project. He can see no other way to unite localities and territories, except by some sort of secular, geographical identity. But this is a fatal move on two counts, one he has already identified. How will this secular identity avoid occupying the place of religion? If there is no authority higher than the assets of the local people, can’t they decide that they want their secular allegiance to be their religion? Who says they can’t? What authority would forbid it? And I would argue that no matter how long and loud everyone swears they aren’t actually establishing this secular nationalism as their religion, the point of order, the point of greatest unity, greatest allegiance simply is the religion of the people. You can banish “religion” all day long with straight faces and censorious tones, like that king commanding the tide not to come in, and there you are at the end of the day with wet socks.

The second reason Scruton’s peace with the privatization of religion is a fatal move — and this is closely related to the wet sock image above — is because “secular” is an imaginary category. If all we mean is non-ecclesiastical jurisdictions, then fine. The government of the church does not extend over the jurisdictions of family or civil magistrates. I do not want bishops or elder boards deciding what math curriculum a family uses to educate their children or what the appropriate sentence for second degree murder is. The spheres of family and state may be said to be “secular” in that limited sense. But this does not imply that they are actually non-religious or that the church has nothing whatever to say to those jurisdictions. Who ordained the authority of the civil magistrate? Who gave the father his jurisdiction in the home? The almighty and living God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ gives that authority, and the Church has been authorized by God to say so, right out in public. The civil government is not non-religious. It is just as religious as the other institutions established by God. It simply has different duties, and the Church has no business micro-managing its functions.

Scruton continues and argues that secular/non-religious law codes are necessary because “religious” laws are unchangeable but human laws can adapt to new situations. He cites the problems with Sharia law, unbending and unflexing down to the present day, but this cuts both ways. Human law can adapt, and it can adapt right into tyranny. He claims that when “God makes the laws, the laws become as mysterious as God is. When we make the laws, and make them for our purposes, we can be certain what they mean” (35). To which I say, “Huh?” It hasn’t been 250 years, and we already don’t know what the Bill of Rights means in the United States. The same five Supreme Court justices voted to uphold the right of states to define marriage, and then a few years later the same five justice voted to insist that all the states recognize sodomite marriage. Again, with all due respect, I say, “Huh?”

All of this ultimately boils down to a fundamental distrust of God and His Word. We would rather trust the wisdom of man than the wisdom of God. But in order to trust God, you must side with Him, openly. You must admit that not all religions are created equal. You must be willing to face the mockery and jeers of the respectable crowd when you say that you’d rather be ruled by the laws of the Old Testament than anything man can come up with. It means you have to be willing to say that Jesus is Lord of these United States. And this is true whether we pass an amendment saying so or not. He is Lord because He rose from the dead. Period. Full stop.

I expect to find a fair bit of edifying content in Scruton’s work, and I have a great deal of respect for his reputation as a conservative, but this is a fundamental flaw that I expect will hamstring most of his work. It’s the fundamental flaw that generally hamstrings conservatives everywhere. And I suspect that we will continue to find ourselves on the losing end of most battles until we repent of this fundamental compromise with the left.

Photo by History in HD on Unsplash

An Exhortation for Children

Children, as we gather for worship this week, I want to speak specifically to you. Are you three? Are you six? Are you twelve? Are you sixteen? I want to speak to all of you. 

First, I want to remind you that you are most welcome here. Jesus said, let the little children come to me, for of such is the Kingdom of God. Worship is not just for adults. It’s for children too. 

Second, I want to encourage you to participate with us. Sing all the songs you know, try to follow along in the bulletin if you can read, say ‘amen’ with us at the end of the prayers and hymns. The Bible teaches that God has determined to silence our enemies by the praises of young children. Do not think you are not important. You are not only welcome, but we need your voices to join with ours in this fight. 

Third, remember that throughout the Bible, you are called upon the obey your parents, to honor your father and mother, that it may go well with you in the land (Eph. 6:1-3). Do you want it to go well with you at school, when you’re riding your bike, when you are playing with friends, when you grow up? God says obey your parents, honor them. How do you do that? Obeying them means doing what they’ve instructed you to do, right away, all the way, and cheerfully. If you wait and do one more thing before obeying, you are not obeying. If you start to do what they’ve asked you to do, and don’t finish, you are not obeying. And if you fuss and whine and roll your eyes and mutter under your breath or complain in your heart while doing what they’ve asked you to do, you are not obeying, and you’re certainly not honoring them. 

God has instructed your parents to teach you to obey them. When they teach you and discipline you to obey them, they are simply obeying God. So do not make this more difficult for them than it already is, and when you have sinned and disobeyed or dishonored them, take their discipline cheerfully. Remember, that what they are doing is making sure that things will go well for you.

And finally, if you know you haven’t been obeying and honoring your parents well, take the moment of silence after our prayer of confession and tell God what you’ve done and ask Him to forgive you and make you clean and give you strength to obey. And then at the first opportunity tell your parents too and ask their forgiveness as well.   

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

All the Old Stories

As we celebrate this meal together once more, I want to remind you that we do so because all the old stories are true. 

There was once a garden on a mountainside with a river flowing out of it, and in the midst of the garden there were two magical trees. And it was a wonderful place and something terrible happened when the man and woman who lived there listened to a talking dragon. 

There really was a great ship that carried two of every kind of living creature, and eight people survived a storm that covered the face of the earth. There really was an old man with a magic staff who challenged the Pharaoh of Egypt, commanding locusts and hail and in the end parted an enormous sea and millions of people walked through on dry ground. There really was a donkey that talked one time, and stars came down in a great thunder storm and fought for Israel. And once the sun stood still, until another battle could be won. 

There really were giants and dragons on the earth in those days, and giant killers and dragon slayers. One shepherd boy killed a giant with his sling shot and then cut off his head. One man prayed and it stopped raining for three years, and then he prayed again and it rained. Another man commanded bears and they mauled his enemies. Another man rode in the belly of a great fish. And once, three young men defied the emperor and were cast into a fiery furnace and then came out again unharmed. 

But the greatest story is about the child king who had a star over his house for a while after he was born and angels sung to shepherds about his birth. He grew up and cast out demons and walked on water and healed the sick, and when his enemies killed him, He came back to life three days later. All these old stories are true, these and many others. We celebrate that greatest old story and all the old stories here at this table because here we celebrate the Great Storyteller.

We know the old stories are true because something like magic has happened in our own lives. We used to have hearts of cold stone but now they are soft and warm. We used to hate God and His stories, and now we love them and we love Him most of all. And so we share bread and wine here with our King, and we remember the old stories and we believe. They are all true, and they are all coming true.

So, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Photo by AJ Robbie on Unsplash

That PCA Canoe

The thing about gravity is that it is the law. Same pretty much goes for water current. It just is. You don’t have to do anything for these realities to do their thing. They are pulling, tugging, and carving, and they are changing you, taking you places, even if you aren’t doing anything. And frequently because you aren’t doing anything.

Call this the Second Law of Thermodynamics applied to culture. Or maybe it’s just Original Sin, but the point is that the systems of the world, human societies, families, churches, nations — apart from the restraining, redeeming grace of God empowering men to remain vigilant and diligent to keep and guard the truth — all human associations are set to “implode.” The implosion tends to be fairly slow — slow enough for some astute cultural commentators to call the whole thing “progress.” Look! They cry, with boyish glee: The mold has grown hair! Conservatives staunchly favor a much slower implosion, while the progressives compete for maximum implosion points.

Switch metaphors, and imagine the number of germs, fungi, viruses, and generally yucky things in and on your body at this very moment. To be honest, you and I are both thoroughly infested. What does your body have to do to succumb to the next sickness? Nothing. In fact, this is what immune disorders are. Diseases that attack the immune system are smart cluster bombs. They attack the body’s defense mechanisms first, and having neutralized the security team, the viruses are free to ransack the body at whatever pace they like. If the body’s secret service agents are all hog tied up in the epithalamus, it doesn’t really matter if you’re feeling fine. You’re actually dying. The sickness is unto death. It’s just a matter of time.

Now all of this is an admittedly long introduction to the simple point I want to make about recent General Assembly PCA doings. I made a few observations on the social medias, and as that conjured a few questions, I thought a more lengthy explanation was in order.

I wrote in one place, “The fact that the PCA *debated* whether to adopt something like the Nashville Statement and the vote was something like 800-500 tells you how bad the cancer is. This was not a victory for conservatives. It was a biopsy of the denomination. The results show us that the PCA has cancer in almost 40% of its lymph nodes. This is stage 4, and apart from radical chemo repentance, this cancer metastasizes and the PCA is dead.”

Now, I grant that some of what I wrote here could be taken in a couple of different ways. What did my emphasis on the word “debated” actually mean for example? This was intentionally a little ambiguous and let me explain why. My point was not that debating is unhealthy or that good men with good intentions could not vote “no” for legitimate concerns. My point was that the fact that something like this needed to be debated tells us how bad things are. And this is admittedly complicated. Some things that need to be debated are already a shameful spectacle. Imagine explaining to John Calvin the need to write the Nashville Statement, much less get the elders of the churches of Geneva to commend it to their congregations. No, Calvin, these men aren’t actually planning to sodomize any men, but they are strongly tempted to sodomy and find it useful to congregate together, identify themselves with this temptation, and to talk about it a lot. Some of them think there’s some unique gift inherent in the temptation to sodomy. Imagine explaining that to John Knox or Jonathan Edwards. Imagine explaining it to the founders of the PCA fifty years ago. The fact that we are having this conversation is an indication of how deep the rot goes. The thought that such a thing would be needed would appall our forefathers. The thought occurreth not.

But this leads to the second sense in which I meant what I wrote about “debate,” and that is that if the thought ever did occurreth to the esteemed fathers aforementioned, the thing would have gone down in 15 minutes like post haste, like a freight train, like mom’s oatmeal cookies fresh out of the oven, crumbling in your mouth, with a large glass of whole milk. And what I mean is that if the fathers could be prevailed upon to see the need to state clearly what sex is for and who may have whom in their beds and what it means to be a man and the shameful sin of effeminacy, they would have passed the thing like it was one of those green, fuzzy balls at Wimbledon, like it was a question about Hillary’s servers at the Democratic Presidential debates. The only difference would be that they would all have likely passed something with a bit more biblical starch than the Nashville Statement. I mean the Nashville Statement was fine. It was decent. It was a bare minimum of biblical. But John Knox probably would have just sent up a bunch of Bible verses about not having sex with barnyard animals, Romans 1, the monstrous regiment of women, and the curses of the covenant hurled from Mt. Ebal, with probably more than a few Hells and Damns sprinkled over the whole thing, and a call to repentance and faith in the cleansing blood of Jesus, all in a thickly curdled Scottish accent.

So I said this whole thing was not some great victory for conservatives but rather a biopsy of the whole denomination, and lo, the cancer is deep in the lymph nodes, as around 500 delegates voted against it, roughly 40% of the assembly. Now granted, maybe the 40% figure was a bit low, but I was primarily taking the word of Pastor Greg Johnson who posted on Twitter regarding the whole business on the next day (since removed) — he being the pastor of the Memorial PCA, the host of the original Revoice Conference. He said that 40% of the PCA rejected the Nashville Statement and that is the future of the PCA. Of course, some in that number likely voted “no” out of procedural or constitutional concerns, some no doubt anointed by the spirit of John Knox wished for something with more of the peat bog in it, but initial reports are that most of the voiced opposition simply saw Nashville as too harsh. They wanted more words like “broken” and “hurting” and “heartache” and “apologies” and “intimate” and “mithional” and “thacramental” and “perichorethith.”

But the real kicker, as the men over at Warhorn pointed out, was the sharp contrast between Greg Johnson’s reception on the floor of GA and Steven Warhurst’s. Greg Johnson, host pastor of the first Revoice conference, urged the GA to vote “no” on commending the Nashville Statement , and he was applauded. While Steven Warhurst, speaking in defense of another overture regarding the basics of biblical sexuality, was interrupted by objections when he had the audacity to explain what the Bible actually teaches about sodomy and the grace of shame that accompanies that sin and temptations to that sin.

So put all of this together: we find ourselves needing to defend what the Bible teaches about basic sexuality and we get a document that does an OK job of addressing the issues but fails to deal a clear and crushing blow to the whole movement. Meanwhile, the Missouri Presbytery investigates the Revoice Conference and Greg Johnson and comes back with a report that says there were faults on all sides, especially with all the internet articles raising concerns, and that while some of the Revoice guys could have been more clear and more careful, they’re a bunch of really great guys who are really trying to help, like, really hard and, omigosh, they are so cute in short shorts. And I should note that the link provided doesn’t say anything about Greg Johnson or any of the other Revoicers in shorts, let alone short ones. The point is simply that the committee was stacked with Revoice sympathizers. And don’t forget that Covenant Seminary is in St. Louis where many future PCA pastors are being groomed, er, I mean trained.

And meanwhile, Greg Johnson is applauded, not frogmarched to the SJC or back to his presbytery and promptly charged to repent of his effeminacy and recant his public teaching in defense of gay orientation. Where were the men who had the courage, or dare I say, the balls, to stand up and denounce Greg Johnson’s open and flamboyant homosexuality on the floor of GA? Where are the charges that have been filed? Where are the complaints piling up in the office of the Stated Clerk and Moderator for letting an openly celibate-gay speak publicly, let alone be cheered and applauded? That was shameful.

And this is why I fully agree with Greg’s assessment that the Revoicers and their sympathizers will eventually win the day in the PCA, if he is not promptly disciplined by men who love Jesus more than the praise of men, by men who will actually love him and will not flatter him and his lusts.

And this brings us at long last to that PCA canoe, sitting apparently rather placidly out in the middle of the water of our culture. There are birds chirping in the trees, a frog croaks somewhere in the bushes, those little water bugs are doing acrobatics across the shiny surface. And people object, aren’t you being extreme? Nothing bad has happened. Look, at all the good the PCA is doing. All is calm. Aren’t you being divisive? And why are you being so hard on the PCA, when you aren’t even in the PCA?

Do not forget that many of the other mainline denominations that have come to accept and endorse homosexual practice began by accepting the category of “celibate gay” orientation. The ELCA Lutherans had allowed celibate gays prior to 2009, when they finally accepted homosexual practice. The church of England has done much the same. It is not being divisive to point out the exact same play being run on my brothers in the PCA. And the reason I’m being so hard on the PCA is twofold: first, I’m doing unto them what I would have them do to me (and the CREC) if we were drifting into infidelity to Scripture, and second, I consider the PCA a very near relative theologically and what is accepted in the PCA is only a matter of time before it is seeping into my water supply and is becoming mainstream throughout conservative presbyterianism.

Or change the metaphor: Some brothers might object: Look, I’m a perfectly good shin bone, no cancer here. And I talked to one of my good friends right after GA, and he’s a perfectly good pectoral muscle. He voted “no” on the Nashville Statement because he thinks we can do better than that. And don’t forget that the PCA declined to include non-ordained folks on denominational boards. Sure. I’m not saying nothing good is happening in the PCA. Neither am I saying anything one way or another about your church or your pastor or the shin bones or the pectoral muscles. But your immune system is dead. The security guards are all gagged and tied up somewhere in Dallas. The PCA commending the Nashville Statement was like a cancer patient deciding to take some Flintstones vitamins. Could it help? Sure, possibly, maybe. I’m glad it passed. I really am. But vitamins really only help a body that has a functioning immune system. The terrible temptation facing the conservatives in the PCA right now is to breathe a sigh of relief right at the moment where they need to pursue and discipline to have any hope of survival.

Which reminds us of that canoe we left up there on Placid Presbyterian Pond. Only turns out that Placid Presbyterian Pond is currently being fed by Vile Affections, a dirty little stream that flows out of Mount Pride, and there’s a twisted undercurrent pulling gently but firmly right to the edge of Homo Falls. The only thing you have to do to go over the Falls is nothing. And at the moment the PCA has no paddles, no anchors, and apparently no sailors. The only folks in the canoe are arguing over whether to lean aft or leeward. This is what they call in presbyterian circles a “Study Committee.”

Photo by Michael Niessl on Unsplash

Does America Have a Lord?

Independence Day 2019

Today, I want to ask the question: Does America have a Lord? Do the United States of America, do we as a nation, as a corporate body, owe allegiance to anyone other than ourselves? Do we have a Lord? 

There are at least two ways to answer this. One way would be to appeal to our own national documents to see if they acknowledge a Lord. We could also look at what the founders believed and said as they were establishing this nation. Another way to answer the question would be to appeal to the nature of reality, logic, truth, or what has often been called natural law. There are other legitimate and important appeals, but let’s just start with these two.

I want to begin with the second appeal to the nature of reality, truth, and natural law. I take it as a given that if there is a natural law then there must of necessity be a Lawgiver. And if we are bound to obey natural law, then we have a natural Lord. And I simply want to make this point by noting that ultimately either truth exists or it does not. But in order for truth to be true, it must, by definition be true all the way down. All the modern nonsense about truth being relative is simply that: nonsense. Does 2 and 2 make 4? Does a square have four sides? And to push this out a little further: do words have meaning? Do our words correspond to reality – such that when we point at a rock or a gun or a truck, we know that we are communicating truth? The answers of course are yes, yes, yes, and yes. But we really need to ask one more question: why? The relativists and secularists are fine with our yes answers as long as we don’t answer why, or as long as we only give some kind of vague answer: that’s just the way it is. But the only reasonable, logical answer is that there is some overarching truth and meaning above it all – there is some foundational truth and meaning at the foundation, underneath it all.

The relativists and secularists have to ultimately say that we create meaning for ourselves and various communities simply agree to go along with certain definitions. And sure, we do invent things and name things and we pass some of those things down to future generations and different nations have different languages, but we are always building with and on top of other raw material. And so you have to ask, where did that come from? No one starts from a completely blank slate or canvass. Everyone is working with a slate someone else made, a canvass and paints someone else made, or at least raw material: wood, metal, glass, stone that has certain properties, certain meanings that they didn’t invent. Therefore, in order for meaning and truth to be completely created/constructed by man, you would have to go all the way back to the beginning and posit some guy creating the world or at least starting it all off. But nobody believes that a man was here before most of this world was here. Everyone believes that a whole bunch of this world was here first. 

And this is why the debate over creation and evolution matters so much. It matters because we are really arguing over the nature of the world that is here before we got here, before we ever say anything about it or do anything with it. We are arguing over whether the world has meaning in itself, independent of our thoughts and words or not. If the world accidentally evolved as a result of mindless chance and millions of random mutations, then there is no meaning, no truth, and logic is just a word we use to describe the way the slime seems to us. Math is not true; it’s just the sound certain molecules make when they squirt in various directions. 

But everyone knows that the world does have meaning apart from us. Certain things are given, fixed, and immoveable. Like gravity. Like physics. Like logic. And all the basic building blocks of reality. Sure, we name those things, but we are giving names to what already exists. Our names do not confer meaning on these realities; they are short hand names for the meaning that it is already there. Our word “gravity” does not make gravity happen or give meaning to the phenomenon of things falling down. Adam did not think up the idea of falling down and call it gravity, gravity pulled him down and Adam noticed. But all of this simply means that there is a natural law and therefore this nature, this universe has a Lawgiver, a Lord who created it and gave it meaning. 

And all of this ties back to the original question since if reality has a Lord, then America has a Lord. America is a subset of Reality. Math, logic, gravity are all given no matter what continent or country you are in. And this would include things like boys are boys and girls are girls. And boys marry girls and nobody or nothing else. And given the days we live in, we also need to add that boys can’t have babies. So quite apart from our founding documents, common sense teaches us that America does in fact have a Lord. Even our ability to reason, think, and breathe implies a Lord and Creator. But it’s always nice when governing documents also state this kind of common sense thing. So, do our nation’s founding documents have anything to say about whether or not our nation bows to any lord? 

Yes, in fact, our founding documents do have something to say about this. The Declaration of Independence, signed on this day 241 years ago, in 1776, says that sometimes it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve political bands and to assume a separate and equal station, which the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitle them to. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that Nature has laws and that Nature has a God. That was part of the basis for America deciding to declare independence from Great Britain. The same document closes by stating, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” The Declaration of Independence appeals to the protection of Divine providence. Divine Providence and Nature’s God would seem to be America’s Lord. 

In George Washington’s Inaugural Speech to both Houses of Congress on April 30, 1789, he said, “It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United Sates a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes… We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained…” Notice that: President Washington explicitly says that no nation may be blessed by Heaven that disregards the eternal rules of order and right ordained by Heaven. There is a transcendent law and lawgiver, an Almighty Being who rules over the universe and presides in the councils of nations. George Washington told the first congress that America had a Lord. 

Elsewhere George Washington said, “It is the duty of nations and as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God … and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.” Washington says that it is a duty of nations to acknowledge their dependence on God. Which God? The God of Holy Scripture, the Bible, in which it says that nations are only blessed when God is their Lord (Ps. 33:12, 144:15).

During the War for Independence, the supply of books printed in London was cut off, and a memorial was brought before congress by a chaplain, urging the printing of a new edition of the Bible in America. Initially, congress thought it would be more economical to import Bibles, and a committee of congress shortly recommended the importing of 20,000 copies of the Bible. But the war concluded before that recommendation could be approved by the full congress. Meanwhile a printer from Philadelphia sought Congress’s approval for the printing and distribution of a new edition of the Bible. One source says, that Robert “Aitken’s Bible was completed by early September 1782. Following a report from congressional chaplains William White and George Duffield commending the “great accuracy” of Aitken’s work, Congress passed the following resolution on September 12: “the United States in Congress assembled, highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interests of religion … , and being satisfied from the above report, of his care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.” 

In addition to these clear indications there are two explicit references to the Lordship of Christ in the Constitution itself. The first is found in Article 1 Section 7 where the President is given ten days to veto any law presented to him by congress. But the Constitution explicitly excepts Sundays from the days to be counted. “If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be law…” While secularists may merely want to chalk this up to cultural custom, it is an explicitly Christiancultural custom. It is widely known that Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath and Friday is the Muslim holy day. During the French Revolution, an attempt was made to shift to a 10 day week in order to subvert the Judeo-Christian calendar. But keeping the Christian Sabbath on Sunday is not merely a Christian custom. The shift from the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Lord’s Day was monumental, and it happened because it was the first day of the week, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Sunday is the Lord’s Day. And written into the United States Constitution is a recognition that our nation acknowledges the Lord’s Day. If the United States Constitution acknowledges the Lord’s Day, we must acknowledge that we have a Lord. 

But there is one more reference that is even more explicit and underlined. It comes in the closing sentence of Article 7, at the very end of the Constitution where it says, “Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present in the seventeenth day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth.” First, we should not miss the fact that the Constitution of the United States explicitly acknowledges that we have a Lord. Let there be no mistake. The Constitution confesses that we have a Lord. Second, while some may want to once again excuse this as a mere custom of dating, we should once again note that it is an explicitly Christian custom of dating. But not only does it participate in that common Christian form of dating events from the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, but it does so in a singularly striking way. It does not merely state the date of the signing, or merely say A.D. It goes further. It lays the birth of our nation right alongside the birth of “our Lord.” This is more than a mere calendar custom. It is an explicit acknowledgement and profession that before the birth of our nation came the birth of our Lord. Of all the events that might be remembered in the history of the world, the Constitution acknowledges that the first and most important is the birth of our Lord, and that event links Americans to all men in all nations, but now for those Christians in America, we also mark the birth of our nation. To deny the birth of Christ and His Lordship is to call into question the birth of the United States.

Putting these two references together, we can say with confidence that the Constitution of the United States recognized the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It acknowledges Christmas and Easter. And it formally confesses that He is “our Lord.” Despite this confession, we have strayed significantly. We have not kept His natural law, and we have not obeyed His written word as found in the Bible. We have done exactly what George Washington said we could not do, which is expect the smiles of Heaven while ignoring and abandoning the laws of Heaven. But that Almighty Being still rules the universe and He still presides in the councils of nations. He is still here even though we reject Him, ignore Him, and despise Him. 

America is a Christian nation. We have a Lord, and His name is Christ. But we have rebelled and disobeyed. There are now only two options before us: either we will continue on this path of rebellion, and He will judge us for our evil. He will shatter us like clay pots. He will destroy us for our bloodshed, our arrogance, our stiff necks, our insolence. As it stands, we have justly earned God’s fierce wrath. We deserve to be destroyed. We deserve to be invaded. We deserve to be scattered. We deserve to have our peace and prosperity stripped away. We deserve to have our precious freedom taken away because we have turned away from the God who gave us this freedom. But if we will repent of our wickedness, if we will humble ourselves before the Judge of all the Earth, there may still be hope for us. But this means that we must confess our sins not only as individuals, but also as states, and as a nation. We must acknowledge that Jesus is our Lord, has always been our Lord, and acknowledge that He has every right to do with us whatever He will. 

It is good and right to pray that God would bless America, but it is only good and right to pray that if we understand that there is no good reason why He should. And if He would bless us, He would give us a deep awareness of our guilt and a deep and abiding shame for our sins. 

There is no hope for America apart from Christ. What can wash away our sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It’s Christ or nothing, Christ or chaos, Christ or tyranny, Christ or the void, Christ or destruction.

Many of the colonists fought for liberty under the banner: No King but Christ. American has a Lord. And His name is Jesus.

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The Truth That Sets You Free

Jn. 8:31-47

Introduction

The world is fundamentally divided between the truth and all lies. Jesus is the Truth, and He speaks the truth of God, and those who are born of God love the truth and hear His voice. But those who are not born of God cannot hear the word of God because they are sons of the devil, who is a liar, and the father of lies. So when we come to considering the importance of telling the truth, repenting of our lies, and learning to hate all lies, we are talking about nothing less than fundamental loyalties, allegiances, and eternal destinies. 

A Summary of the Text

It’s striking that John says that Jesus spoke these hard words to those Jews “who believed in Him” (Jn. 8:31), but Jesus ends up by saying that some of them don’t believe in Him (Jn. 8:45). I take this to mean that there were both believers and unbelievers in the crowd. This doesn’t mean that all of the Jews who believed in Him were offended by His words or that the Jews who believed in Him were actually unbelievers and sons of the devil. But it does mean that Jesus was not seeker-sensitive. It also means that the hard truth is good for those who believe, especially when it is aimed directly at their pride. The hard truth is also good because it divides believers and unbelievers. Jesus, master preacher, immediately finds their pride hideout, which is apparently (and deeply ironically) related to the notion of freedom (Jn. 8:31-32). The Jews lie to Jesus, insisting that they have never been in bondage to anyone, which is a whopper if there ever was one (Jn. 8:33). Imagine some of the kids standing there getting shushed for asking about Passover (cf. Judges, Babylonian exile, the Romans!). Jesus is undeterred and insists that all who sin are fundamentally enslaved, and only He can set men free (Jn. 8:34-36). 

Their pride in their Jewishness, their lineage from Abraham, is all wrong since they want to kill Jesus, something Abraham would not have done (Jn. 8:37-40). Jesus says they are doing the works of their father alright, but he isn’t Abraham or God, because they don’t understand Him (Jn. 8:41-43). Children recognize the voice of their father in utero, and therefore, if the words of Jesus are nonsense to them, the devil is their father (Jn. 8:44). Some of the Jews are already plotting to kill Jesus, and this is hardly surprising since lies and murder go together. Lies are verbal murder and originate from the father of lies and murder (Jn. 8:44). Jesus insists that those who do not believe Him, fundamentally refuse because they hate the truth (Jn. 8:45). He makes the same point by inviting someone to testify that He is lying, but since no one will, He points out that the only other option is believing in Him (Jn. 8:46). Jesus concludes that it is all very simple: those who are of God love the truth of His word, and those who do not love the truth of His word are not of God (Jn. 8:47). Choose this day whom you will serve, and who are your people?    

The Ninth Commandment

Because God created the heavens and earth by speaking (Gen. 1:3) and upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3), lying is always an attempt to unmake the world as it actually is, which is an act of pride and insolence and war (cf. Ps. 120). “A lying tongue hates those who are crushed by it, and a flattering mouth works ruin” (Prov. 26:28). Telling the truth is required by the ninth commandment, which specifically forbids bearing false witness against your neighbor (Ex. 20:16). But this is not merely a prohibition against actively lying under oath in court. This also requires active rejoicing in the truth and a hatred of all lies (Prov. 13:5, 1 Cor. 13:6, Ps. 119:163). Notice how the entire community has a role to play when a false witness arises in the land (Dt. 19:16-21). In other words, the ninth commandment necessitates the active protection of your neighbor’s good name. This is a simple application of the golden rule: whatever you would have others do to you, do to them (Eph. 4:25, Mt. 7:12). 

Truth Inflation

The problem with lies is the problem with all inflation. It devalues the currency, which effectively steals from others. Rather than letting your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” a “no,” lies and deception tend to drive language to extremes of oaths, profanities, and obscenities to try to make up for all the “fake news” (Mt. 5:36-37). This includes the lies and deception of trying to hide sin, excuse making, vain boasting, and flattery, either falsely praising what is not praiseworthy (complimenting an immodest dress or haircut) or else pretending all is well when it obviously isn’t (sipping tea while the house is on fire). Like fiscal inflation, lying tends to breed more lying. Most lies come in fire-sale deals of packs of 10 or 12. You had to lie to yourself the first time to justify the lie you told to someone else. Then you had to lie to yourself again when you didn’t immediately confess the truth. Meanwhile, you were lying to God the entire time, who sees and knows all things (Job 34:21, Acts 5:3). But since you’ve attempted to remake the world according to your own arrogant wisdom, everything else in the world must be (eventually) shifted to fit your version, multiplying lies exponentially. Maybe it started as lying about the five dollars missing from the counter or what you did with your friends last night, but now you have to explain where you got that five dollars and what you did with your friends last night. And be sure: your sin will always find you out (Num. 32:23), and with it will come great trouble (Josh. 7). 

A Warning

It’s always a bit dicey preaching on something like this because there are certain tender consciences that are pricked at the thought of lying, and suddenly they wonder if they need to confess that one time when they said it was 3:15, but the second hand wasn’t quite all the way to the 12 and so it was actually 3:14. And then there are the folks who think everything is like rounding and approximating because they have no real regard for the truth. So here’s the rule of thumb directly from Jesus: do unto others what you have them do to you. Unless the difference between 3:14 and 3:15 was an intentional attempt to make yourself look better or give yourself some kind of advantage, you probably need to stop agonizing over it. Do not be cheated of the reward of a clean conscience by a false humility (Col. 2:18). Bearing false witness against yourself is still bearing false witness. Some of you need to stop telling those lies. But if you have a habit of rounding and spinning everything to your advantage and to others’ disadvantage, you are a liar, and those lies are murderous acts of hatred against God and your neighbor. And liars will be cast into Hell with the rest of the wicked (Rev. 21:8).    

Conclusion: The Freedom of Confession

Since lies are fundamentally at war with God and His reality, it is a terrible existence to live with unconfessed lies. It is like a sickness that will not go away, like a weight around your neck, like a thirst you cannot quench, like a deep pit in your stomach (Ps. 32:2-4). And this is God’s hand heavy upon you. But God laid His hand heavy upon Jesus on the cross in order that you might confess your sins and be rid of them forever. This is the truth that sets all men free. But in order to be set free, you must admit that you have been enslaved to your sins. Do you want God’s hand heavy upon you or upon Christ? What will it be? And you cannot get this freedom piecemeal or by partial confession. It’s all or nothing, Christ or nothing. But when you come clean, when you confess, when you come to Christ in all honesty, there is complete forgiveness and freedom. God becomes your hiding place, and He surrounds you with His songs of deliverance (Ps. 32:5-7).

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