Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 58

Dealing with Same-Sex Lust

[These are my notes for a talk I gave at the Prepared Conference 2019]

Introduction

The play of the devil from the beginning has been to redefine things such that God’s people come to believe that God’s word no longer applies (Gen. 3:1). A few decades ago, the liberalizing faction tried to claim that the Bible condemned promiscuous or violent or idolatrous homosexuality but not committed, monogamous homosexual unions. The false claim was that the ancient world didn’t know about committed, loving homosexual unions. But these claims have now been refuted. Today our fearless and daring schemers are trying to redefine lust as “attraction” and they are trying to redefine homosexual lust as something entirely different than heterosexual lust. But lust is lust, and sexual sin really is a staircase people/cultures fall down not separate, unrelated doors in a hallway various people enter. And this is good news because it means that the Bible actually prepares us to deal with these sins and temptations.

Leaving the Natural Use

The Bible teaches that homosexual sin is the judgment of God on a society (Rom. 1:24-26). Homosexual sin is something that God gives people over to. And we should not miss the fact that this consists of vain imaginations, foolish and dark hearts, and becoming fools (Rom. 1:21-22), which is to say that this sin (like all sin) doesn’t really make sense. So, there is a kind of randomness to it, in the sense that it makes no sense. But when sinners sin, they tend to find the same wicked grooves as generations before. When men sin sexually, they are not actually being creative, and their “heterosexual” promiscuity is already heading inevitably in a homosexual direction. Leaving “the natural use of women” is not merely speaking about intercourse. The “natural use” of women is one man marrying one woman and loving her faithfully “till death do us part.” While there are varying degrees of sexual confusion, fornication, prostitution, adultery, pornography are all unnatural uses of women. Sodomy and bestiality are the end of that road, but they are practiced by refusing to love one woman well (e.g. Lev. 18:20-24). To the extent that a great deal of sexual promiscuity is driven by perverted masculine sexual impulses, manipulating women to serve the selfish desires of men, we should see homosexual lust as one of the likely results.

Is Homosexual Sin Worse than Other Sin?

This question is often playing on ambiguity rather than actually trying to be theologically or pastorally helpful. The Bible is very clear that some sins are worse than others. David prays: “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, And I shall be innocent of great transgression” (Ps. 19:12-13). The Westminster Catechism agrees: “QUESTION 83. Are all transgressions of the law equally heinous? ANSWER: Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.” Ezekiel speaks of “greater abominations” (Ez. 8:6, 13, 15), and Jesus speaks of the greater culpability of those who reject Him than cities that were judged for their sins (e.g. Mt. 10:15). Likewise, those who cause little ones to sin are clearly deserving of greater judgment (Mt. 18:6). Even the image of removing the log from your own eye before addressing the speck in your brother’s eye presupposes different degrees of sin. Of course, all sin is sufficient to separate one from God and merits eternal death (Rom. 6:23). All sin is equally damning eternally, but not all sin is equally damaging temporally. Some sins do more harm than others, and therefore God hates some sins more than others. Homosexual lust is a “vile affection” (Rom. 1:26), and if heterosexual lust is heart-adultery, then homosexual lust is a shameful, debased abomination of the heart (Lev. 20:13, Rom. 1:27-28). 

Father Hunger

At the root of so much of our cultural confusion and corruption is the plague of fatherlessness. Sometimes absent or limp or abusive fathers cultivate harsh and domineering women and lost, confused, and starving children result. Fatherlessness creates holes that frequently drive kids to look for happiness and love and acceptance in all the wrong places. The “LGBT community” offers a superficial version of love and family. But the corruption of sin (unchecked) also seeks to corrupt others (witness sodomite parades, drag queen story hours, pornography, etc.). Faithful fathers normalize masculinity/femininity, family, marriage, work, etc., but the goal of these public displays of corruption is to corrupt the naïve, ignorant, bitter, and lost. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage” (2 Pet. 2:19). In the absence of faithful fathers, hurt feelings, loneliness, bitterness, puberty, and curiosity combine to create highly flammable situations, and if the wrong image, video, thought, situation, friendships can get lodged into mind and body and habits, ruts of sexual sin can quickly seem like identities — as though you’ve always felt that way. The Bible teaches that identity is cultivated by our fathers: ultimately either God is our Father or the Devil is our father (Jn. 8). And the gospel is the good news that there is a way back to our Heavenly Father through the death and resurrection of His Son. 

Applications:

Use biblical language unapologetically: Call lust “lust” not “attraction” or “orientation.” The only “orientation” the Bible gives us is either male or female. And that is created by God and established by biology. In the very rare instances of biological/chromosomal ambiguity, parents/pastors/doctors should do their best to understand and receive what God has created as either male or female. And those sex assignments are general callings to be oriented to the world in certain ways (as male or female) and not others. Even a “eunuch” should live as a man/woman even if marriage and/or children is not possible. Failure or refusal to accept those assignments, to long for others, to pretend others is envy, lust, bitterness, rebellion, perversion, corrupting, and shameful. 

Call sinners to repentance through the blood of Christ: The point of biblical clarity is to call people to the simplicity of repentance. Sin is a tangled web of confusion. But the blood of Christ simplifies everything. We want to call sin sin because the blood of Christ washes away all sin. Apart from the gospel, we have nothing. All the schemes and machinations of men amount to various forms of alchemy, our own man-made “salvation” concocted by psychoanalysis, medications, free health care, whatever. But our culture is increasingly like the woman in the gospels, who the more she was treated by the physicians the worse she got. Jesus is the great physician, and He bled and died for these sins (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Homosexual lust should not surprise us or make us panic. The consequences are more severe, but where sin has abounded, God’s grace abounds still more.  

Cut off the hands, pluck out the eyes: After sin has been recognized, confessed, and forgiven, the same steps of repentance apply across the board: put off the old man and put on the new man (Eph. 4:22-24ff). Where are you tempted, where are there weak points? Do you need to get rid of your smart phone, cancel your internet, stop spending time with those friends? Do you need to get into the Word, join a Bible study, get a second job, tithe, learn to be a man/woman?

Pursue Christian marriage and family: “But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9). Critics want to claim that Paul was here only speaking about heterosexuals who cannot contain their passion, but this is to assume distinctions where the Bible speaks of none. In the vast majority of cases, someone tempted to homosexuality is fully capable of heterosexual marriage. And with careful discipleship and monitoring, they should be pastored toward that goal. 

Photo by Ihor Saveliev on Unsplash

The Shape of Trinitarian Community

1 Thess. 4:9-12

Introduction

The Trinity is the source and archetype of true Christian community: “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn. 1:3). We have been made alive together, and the resulting community is a glorious part of the riches of His grace (Eph. 2:5-6). But this means our fellowship/community must be shaped by the Bible and not whatever we (or our culture) assumes it to be. 

The Text: “But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you…” (1 Thess. 4:9-12).

A Summary of the Text: Paul says that the Thessalonians have “brotherly love” down really well because they were taught by God Himself (1 Thess. 4:9). Apparently, Thessalonica had become something of a center of Christian community, as they had become examples in Macedonia, Achaia, and “in every place” (1 Thess. 1:6-8). They had also been granted the ability to share that brotherly love with many outside their immediate community, “toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia” (1 Thess. 4:10). Paul urges them to increase more and more while pursuing quiet lives, minding their own business, and working with their own hands, just as the apostles had commanded them (1 Thess. 4:11). He says that they need to remember this for the sake of their witness to those who are outside the Church and so no one will be in need (1 Thess. 4:12).  

Quiet Lives

For many of you with vans full of kids, you wonder what Paul could have possibly meant by a “quiet” life, but I don’t think Paul is talking about word count or decibel levels so much as he is talking about joy count and peace levels (cf. Ps. 131:2). The same word is used by Peter to exhort Christian wives to cultivate a “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Pet. 3:4). In the context of marriage, fellowship grows as each spouse draws closer to Christ. The point here is that the goal of all Christian community is winning others closer to Christ not to ourselves or our own agendas. This is Christian love. If someone else comes closer to Christ they will have necessarily come closer to others who are also in Christ, but that is a secondary blessing and not the primary goal. So a quiet spirit and a quiet life are characterized by a recognition of the presence and agenda of God and resting in Him and His plans for our community life. The verb form of the same word (quiet) is used to describe keeping Sabbath in one place (Lk. 23:56). A quiet life is a life driven by Christian Sabbath, which is why we rest on the first day of the week. The finished work of Christ grounds all of our labors: we work because God has already accepted our works (Eccl. 9:7), and so we work for Christ, not as man-pleasers (Col. 3:23-24). A quiet life insists that true community is only in and through Christ. A quiet life leaves space and time for Christ to be the center. 

Elsewhere, Paul instructs Timothy that the churches should pray for civil magistrates, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” (1 Tim. 2:2-4). And notice that Paul once again connects this to all men being saved and coming to a knowledge of the truth. “Better is a dry morsel with quietness, than a house full of feasting with strife” (Prov. 17:1). A fair bit of striving is rooted in an idolatry of community, demanding of people or a graven-ideal what they were never designed by God to give. “Better a handful with quietness than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind” (Eccl. 4:6). We want our community to be marked by a quiet and confident exuberance in Christ, not a toiling and grasping after the wind of human intimacy (1 Cor. 13:12). 

Mind Your Own Business

For some reason, this particular exhortation doesn’t make it into most of the Christian community books, but it really should be in one of the early chapters: mind your own business. We think this doesn’t sound very hospitable, friendly, or evangelistic. But Paul explicitly says that we must mind our own business in order that we may walk in an orderly, decent way towards those who don’t know Jesus (1 Thess. 4:11). Proverbs says something similar: “Seldom set foot in your neighbor’s house, lest he become weary of you and hate you” (Prov. 25:17, cf. Prov. 27:14). “Also do not take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others” (Eccl. 7:21-22, cf. Prov. 19:11). Minding your own business is not a charge to be rude or self-centered or thoughtless, but it is a charge to focus on the things God has given you to do and not add your own gas to your neighbor’s grease fire (Prov. 26:17). Also, be aware that what sometimes passes for “community” is actually a form of laziness. It’s sometimes easier to be worried about other people’s problems than facing your own, easier to reach out to people you don’t know, and meanwhile God has put people in your own home for you to love, feed, serve, help, and bless: “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8). Hospitality and friendship should be an overflow of the fellowship you have in Christ. Be diligent in loving your people so that there is no lack in your home or anywhere else (1 Thess. 4:12). And none of this justifies being a bad neighbor or shutting your heart to a brother in need when you have the means to help (1 Jn. 3:17).    

Work With Your Own Hands

Reading between the lines, the Thessalonians were so good at “brotherly love,” they attracted freeloaders and busybodies. Paul reminds the Thessalonians earlier in this letter of his example of labor and toil: “laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you” (1 Thess. 2:9). By the time Paul wrote his second letter to the Thessalonians, he needed to be even more explicit: “For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies” (2 Thess. 3:10). Paul says Christians should not keep company with people like that (2 Thess. 3:14). Likewise, Paul warns Timothy that young widows left to themselves, often learn to be idle, going about house to house, becoming gossips and busybodies (1 Tim. 5:13) – and no doubt some did so in the name of “building Christian community.” Didn’t the early Christians in Acts have all things in common, breaking bread from house to house (Acts 2:46)? Yes, they did, but that was a temporary stopgap addressing the unexpected Pentecost vacation extensions for many out of town guests and many residents were also preparing to leave Jerusalem, and the apostles really had their hands full with the attendant difficulties and Facebook didn’t even exist yet. But the standing gospel command is clear: “Now those who are [busybodies] we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread” (2 Thess. 3:12, cf. Eph. 4:28). 

Conclusion

Jesus is the bread of life for the life of the world, and you are not, and neither is any other person in this world. Christ ministers His life to the world as “every part does its share” (Eph. 4:16). This means fixing your eyes on Jesus, the source of all Christian community and resting in Him, eating your bread with joy and drinking your wine with a merry heart because God has already accepted your works. This means minding the business God has assigned to you: building your house, loving your wife, serving your husband, encouraging and training your kids, being a blessing to your roommates, practicing hospitality, and looking for ways to serve and encourage others to do the same. This is brotherly love, and this is the shape of Christian community.

Drag Queen Potty Hour, Theocracy, and Why I’m Not Worried

So if Drag Queen potty hour was such a big deal, why didn’t the founders of our nation mention it in the constitution?

I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. 

Bingo.

It never entered George Washington’s venerable mind that the civil magistrate would need to cover that one. Why? Because there were no men tempted to wear women’s clothing in the 18thcentury? No, not hardly. Some of those Victorian fellows were already getting pretty racy with the lacy. And besides, this temptation to sexual confusion was covered by Moses in the 15thcentury B.C., so we can pretty much assume that this sin is as old as dirt. It probably occurred to one of Adam’s kids in a cave somewhere in Mesopotamia at the dawn of time.

But it also didn’t occur to the venerable GW because he believed in other authorities besides civil government. He believed in the authority and blessing of family and church governments. In the normal course of things, parents are entrusted with training up children in the culture of Jesus (Eph. 6:4), which means among other things, that they are entrusted with teaching their boys and girls how to be boys and girls, and which clothes go with which sex, modesty, etc. So when we get to the point where the civil magistrate needs to ban trans-dressers from children’s story hour at the local library, a number of things really have gone wrong. Among them massive and gross failures of fathers and pastors. The church has not discipled those in its own ranks to obey everything the Lord Jesus commanded. Fathers have not raised their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Instead, we have largely been seduced and discipled by enlightenment secularism – the false gospel of statism – that a neutral public square will end all our benighted religious bickering and wars. This religion has been the religion taught in our public schools now for over a century. It’s the religion that claims to be non-religious, the faith that is only based on science and reason and Darwinian fairy dust sprinkled over it all. And now we arrive at the ludicrous point of needing to tell hairy men in maxi dresses and lipstick that they may not groom small children to be as ugly as they are.

So in the ordinary course of things, civil magistrates need not legislate what marriage is, what boys and girls are, exactly how much of a woman’s breast may be exposed in public, and who may read stories to children in public spaces. This is because fathers and pastors and the general public police their own ranks. But when a culture crumbles to the point where nearly naked men are gyrating in public and little children are being cheered to imitate them on day time television, Christian civil magistrates are not free to throw up their hands and say that there is nothing to be done. But neither are they free to micromanage society and legislate beyond what God has given them authority over. Just as churches must not “help” the poor in such a way as to take away their dignity and agency and responsibility, so too the civil magistrate must not “nanny” the public. But there are certain menaces to public good that must be resisted. The fact that congress felt the need to pass the Defense of Marriage Act (ironically, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996) signaled that we were in deep trouble. But it was still the right thing to do, and when the Supreme Court unconstitutionally and illegally overturned the clear rule of law, the law of nature, and God’s eternal law, the United States should have collectively laughed and ignored the Obergefell ruling. 

But the enlightenment secularism infection goes deep. With the exception of a few holdouts here and there, our fathers and pastors largely submitted to Obergefell, calling it the “law of the land.” But this was not merely illegal usurpation on the part of SCOTUS and cowardly acquiescence on the part of the states and the congress and the people, it was also an act of superstitious faith. It was a religious prostration before the god of the land. Five justices in black robes pronounced ominously that two dudes can become one flesh. They made this announcement with no less pomp and lisping than pagan priests fresh from the auguries. Only instead watching the flight patterns of falcons to practice their divinations, these high priests proclaimed that they had cut open the innards of the constitution and found there snug between the kidneys and intestines the right to do anything that makes you happy. The priests proclaimed this new doctrine, and the “faithful” bowed and worshipped. 

So this is the problem. Christians worshipped that golden calf. Christians are still worshipping that golden calf. They are worshipping that golden calf every time they say it is the law of the land. Every time they acknowledge any legitimacy to that ruling, as well as it’s bloody predecessor Roe. But all of these rulings have been built on the pagan altar of neutrality and equality. That false religion claims that if the state remains neutral and unbiased, the maximum number of viewpoints, practices, religions, and ethnicities will be permitted to COEXIST. And every time Christians agree with that they are putting a pinch incense on that altar. Every time Christians agree that Darwinism should get just as much public air time as Creationism, they are putting a pinch of incense on that altar. Every time Christians agree that sodomites should be allowed to march down the street performing obscenities in order to make room for Christians to do the same, Christians are putting a pinch of incense on the bloody altar of neutrality. 

There is no neutrality. Nations cannot pretend to have no allegiance to any god. Jesus commanded His disciples to preach the gospel to the nations and disciple the nations. And in the New Jerusalem, John saw the nations bringing their treasures to the King. In the end every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. They will either do it now in this age willingly and gladly, or else they will be made to do it at the end, right before they are cast into the lake of fire. For Christians to insist that the public square have no allegiance to Jesus, is for Christians to defy their Lord Jesus. It is for Christians to insist that their nation not be saved. 

No doubt someone reading this imagines that all of this is a call for a Christian Taliban or a Sharia Theonomy. But let me be clear: I’m saying nothing different than the apostles themselves when they proclaimed the Lordship of Jesus and called all men everywhere to repent and be saved in Him. The fundamental question is whether we trust God or not. Is God’s word good and true or not? Can man come up with a better system of law than what is found in the entirety of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation? Is there any other name by which men may be saved? We are living with the results of such human hubris today. In our arrogance we have locked up 2.2 million people in prisons like animals, we have murdered 60 million babies, we have states insisting that this murder be allowed all the way up to birth and maybe even after birth, we have skyrocketing opioid addiction, climbing suicide rates, families ravaged by porn and sexual promiscuity, and the statists solemnly warn us about the dangers of theocracy?

And all God’s people said, what?

Do we believe in theocracy? Well, do we believe in the rule of the Triune God in every realm and every sphere? Is Jesus Lord over every square inch of this universe? Absolutely. Should people do wicked, immoral things in the name of Jesus. Of course not. How do we know that? Because of some spark of goodness in the human soul or because the Bible tells me so? I’m going with the latter. Should we obey the Bible in our families, in our churches, and in our public squares? Absolutely. Where is Jesus not Lord? The rule of man is harsh and cruel and crushing. Haven’t we had enough of that? The law of God is just and wise and gracious. A truly biblical and Christian republic would privilege Christianity publicly, but it would be far kinder to non-Christians than the current religious regime of secularism — a lying scam, pretending to have no allegiance, while demanding shoe laces and spiders and eyes of newts for their cauldron of equality. But it’s all a sham, a farce, worse than a gaudy Halloween party. And you know it’s all a big charade because secularism has no grace. It has no forgiveness. Secularism cannot save because it has no Savior. It’s just a depressed and petty, thin-skinned tyrant.

The issue isn’t that we in the 21stcentury have uniquely sinful hearts. No, we’re just as gunked up as the rest of human history. The issue is that we have given in to the gunk. There has always been perversion in the hearts of men, and men have sought out dark corners of the world to perform their gunk, and they will until the end of the world. But God in His grace and mercy has refused to let our sin be the last word. From the beginning, from the first moments of Adam’s despairing fall, God spoke the most gracious no. And that ‘no’ is most gracious because it is a ‘no’ of hope, a ‘no’ of promise. Francis Shaeffer famously said that our fundamental problem since the dawning of the enlightenment and rationalism has been a cataclysmic surrender to despair. When man began ignoring and later outright rejecting his Maker, what was left was man alone, finite man, foolish man, fallible man, fallen man, and that really is a desperate condition. But into the blackhole of human sin God has spoken and we have heard: He is there and He is not silent. 

And so in this moment of Drag Queen potty hours and gayshame parades and partial-after-birth abortions and mass incarcerations and social justice jingoism, I am not distraught. I am not despairing. Jesus is risen from the dead. He has gone down into the darkness and He became all of this sin and shame. He became our guilt for this. He became our defiance, our lies, our contempt, our gunk. And He swallowed it all. He took it all. He made atonement. Jesus established perfect justice. How could I despair at this moment when Jesus paid for all of this with His precious blood and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father?   

No, I’m actually more hopeful because the Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. We do not call on the civil magistrates to legislate righteousness out of desperation or despair. We do not call on civil magistrates to ban these public obscenities because we are afraid of men in dresses. Ha. When all of the courts and officials and armies and presidents take their stand against the Lord, it’s like a momentary bubble in the breeze, like a puff of pink smoke before a hurricane. God is not worried. God is not on the defensive. God is not thinking about Plan B or looking around anxiously for other options. God sits enthroned in the heavens forever. He sits and smirks at all our feverish plotting. So we call on civil magistrates to ban these charades in the name of Jesus, which is to say, in the name of our Savior, in the name of the King of the Universe, in the name of the Word of God, in the name of Him who rides upon the Storm, in the name of the Name above all names. And so we are not calling them to repentance in a panic, in a tizzy, in a bluster. No, we are calling them to life from the dead, we are calling them into the unapproachable, inextinguishable Light of light, that times of refreshing may come on our land. The land us full of dead and dry bones, and we are sitting in our beach chairs, ice teas in hand, ready for the show.

I wrote recently that becoming a Christian is like losing everything in a housefire, and then walking through the rubble and finding unexpected treasures that somehow miraculously made it through the fire, given back to you. Becoming a Christian means taking up a cross, dying with Jesus, surrendering everything, and then rising with Him, and receiving all things back as unexpected treasures – such that all is grace. But the same thing applies to nations and public squares, to families and churches. We need badly to repent, to surrender to Jesus. It’s too late to patch this thing up. It’s burned to the ground, it’s dust and ashes, but if we surrender, if we admit we are dead, He will make us live again, and He will give us grace.

Photo by Jakob Puff on Unsplash

Why Civil Magistrates Should Ban Drag Queen Story Hour

I touched on this last week in my post on civility and decency in public discourse, but since our debouched overlords are not likely to have read my blog post or decided to repent yet, I want to send up another flare. So what’s the big deal? Why should Christians be bothered by Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library? And even more pointedly, why should Christians ask their civil magistrates to protect the public square from sodomite parades, prostitution, porn shops, and these drag queen potty hours? Why should these things not be protected forms of free speech? And how is pushing to ban these public obscenities not a form of religious persecution?

No one believes that anyone can just do anything in public. There are still laws in most cities against indecent exposure. Despite periodic topless protests to the contrary, most cities still have ordinances requiring a bare minimum of coverage. Why? Because public nudity is indecent. It is not in the interest of public good. It is obscene. It is offensive. But isn’t this discriminating against people who feel they have the right to be nude in public? Yes, it is. But laws by definition discriminate. They discriminate between actions that are allowed and actions that are not allowed. They are indiscriminate in that they apply to everyone in the city limits or in the county or state of jurisdiction. They discriminate between what is considered conducive to the public good and not conducive to the public good. Examples could also include sound ordinances, speed limits, and zoning restrictions. My freedom of expression is limited by all of these things all day long. I may not play my favorite Mark Knopfler song above a certain decibel level at 2am. I cannot drive the speed that feels most free to me. Nor may I build whatever my heart desires in certain sections of the city. I am not free to express myself in any way I wish. And while I happen to believe that many of these ordinances have gone overboard into realms of oppression and tyranny, I also maintain a fundamental respect for the principle of protecting the public good. 

My problem is that in many cities the public good is no longer actually being protected from profanity and obscenity, the latest wave being the Drag Queen Story hour sewage sweeping the nation. The reason this sort of thing should be banned is because it is an unsightly assault on the eyes to be subjected to ugly men in dresses. And on top of that, it is also perverse and obscene. These things should be banned by city ordinance for the same reason that loud music at 2am is banned and indecent exposure is banned. It is indecent and toxic for a sexually confused man to be allowed access to children while wearing a tutu and eye shadow. Particularly, in our so-called #metoo moment, which claims to have concern for victims of sexual abuse, this is pure and utter insanity (the silence of the #metoo crowd on Drag Queen story hour is deafening). But just read any of the literature on sexual abuse, and the common theme you will find is that most sexual abuse occurs in contexts of trust. Predators are usually well-known friends or family members who exploit relationships of trust. And then, in a context of trust, the predator slowly grooms his victims. And he does this by slowly but surely transgressing certain boundaries in order to normalize them, in order to wear down natural resistance or embarrassment or repulsion. While public libraries have long since given up their positions of trust, they are still publicly advertising to be such places, what do they call them? Safe spaces? Many cities are panic stricken at the thought of fourth or fifth hand smoke drifting in the air within six city blocks of a child. But cities will stand by while creeps cosy up to their kids?

The same thing goes for laws against prostitution, pornography, and gayshame parades. These are not merely sins — they are also a public menace. They are public blasphemies, public obscenities, public profanities, and they are acts of public grooming. We are allowing sexual predators to advertise, normalize, and seduce the weak, the vulnerable, and frequently our youth. But of course all of this assumes a morality, a standard, and the libertarian impulse inside most conservative people triggers at the thought of handing weapons to the enemy. If the civil magistrate is allowed to ban Drag Queens and sodomite parades what will stop them from banning public evangelism or protesting abortion clinics? Well, nothing will stop them except virtue and a generally virtuous society. But notice our inconsistency: who balks at the criminalization of murder, worried that someone might use that power to ban Christian churches? Who balks at criminalization of rape or indecent exposure, worried that some punk politician will leverage those laws against Christians? Could they? Sure. What stops them? A general respect for virtue, righteousness, goodness. This is why it matters who you elect, why it matters who is put on your city council, county commission, state house, etc. But the myth of neutrality is a sucker punch that keeps on giving (bruises). You cannot build a virtuous society out of non-virtuous bricks. You cannot insist that everyone make room for a virtue-free zone and then wait for everyone to grow virtuous backbones. The neutrality myth and all attempts at value-free public square are scams made up by the enemies of God and freedom to fool gullible Christians. We are like Charlie Brown agreeing to let Lucy hold the football for us one more time, while she promises to hold it there for us, swearing by all the gods of neutrality she will not pull it away this time. Heh. Don’t we know better yet?

Christians must insist on virtue in the public square within the limits of God’s word. Certain virtues are given to the Church to proclaim and protect, others are given to the family and individuals to teach and enforce, but some are given to the civil magistrate. His job is to punish evil doers and provide for the common defense of the people, and to praise the righteous (Rom. 13:3-4). And this includes upholding God’s law that it is an abomination for men to wear women’s clothing (Dt. 22:5). An abomination is something that defiles the land; an abomination is a public menace. Christian magistrates who are committed to submitting to God’s limitations on the spheres of government will of necessity be working to deregulate a ton of the totalitarian gunk the soft-socialists have imposed on us over the last number of decades. But this is not so that we may return to some sort of blank and deregulated neutral zone. No, it is so we may worship and serve the Lord Jesus, which means there are certain regulations and laws which must be upheld in the name of Jesus, namely prohibiting public blasphemy, obscenity, and grooming.

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The Spirit for the Guilty

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (Jn. 20:21-22)

Jesus said these words when He appeared to the disciples gathered in the upper room on the first Easter Sunday. It was 50 days later on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit would be poured out with power. But here Jesus comforts the disciples and assures them that He is alive, and even after most of them had run away in despair at the crucifixion, Jesus actually commissions them and re-commissions them to His service. 

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the 50thday of Easter, the day we remember and celebrate Jesus pouring out His Spirit on the Christian Church. And Jesus still meets with His people wherever they gather in His name – He is here in our midst. And He still ministers His peace, His comfort. He still breathes His Spirit on His people and commissions them. But notice this: He meets with disciples who have failed, with disciples who have been cowardly, disciples who are afraid, disciples in hiding, disciples doubting. In short, Jesus meets with people who need His peace, who need His Spirit. 

Has your heart been troubled this week? Have you been overwhelmed, angry, worried? Have you given in to sin, have you stumbled? Then this table is for you. You qualify. This meal is not your reward for being good. This meal proclaims grace for those who are not good. This meal is the peace of Christ, purchased for the guilty, by His precious blood. Are you guilty? Then you qualify. This meal is for you. 

And this is what Jesus says to you, as you come in faith. He says, Peace to you! As my Father has sent me, I also send you. Jesus assures you that He has made peace by His blood. Your sins are forgiven. You are washed whiter than snow. And He sends you back out into the world, just as He was sent into the world by the Father. He sends you back to work, back into your families, back to fight sin again. And He sends you with His peace, with His comfort, with His Spirit.

So, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.   

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Doctored Dictionaries & Ruffian Referees

On Civility & Decency in Public Discourse

Look, I’m a Christian and a Christian pastor, and the Bible is utterly clear about certain standards of discourse. My words must imitate God’s words. They must be gracious, kind, truthful, seasoned with salt, and they must not be vicious, malicious, vindictive, biting, cruel, or foul. But we cannot say this and then breathe a sigh of relief and go back to assuming everything will be fine. We cannot make everyone in the world sign this statement and then pretend all is well. Something is missing. We need a dictionary. What does “truthful” mean? What does “vicious” mean? What constitutes cruelty and vindictiveness and what constitutes salty and gracious?

It’s not enough to make everyone promise to be good or civil or decent. Ok great, now who gets to decide what those words mean? Who are the referees? Where is the rule book? 

Christians, and Christian leaders in particular, are frequently and far too easily manipulated by their enemies by these true standards into caving and compromise on matters that the Bible is equally clear we must not cave or compromise on. And they cave and compromise by bowing to alien standards. They cave and compromise by submitting to doctored dictionaries, ransacked rule books, and ruffian referees. Because we have a natural inclination to submit to authorities, we are the idiots who tend to acquiesce to any old rapscallion in a zebra shirt. If a whistle blows we defer. If a siren blares, we comply. If a gavel rattles, we conform. But this is not wisdom. This is not biblical. This is not obedient. 

This is because God has spoken clearly and revealed to us that many authorities are wicked. Many authorities are wolves in sheep masks. Many dictionaries are scams. It is wrong for Christians to be naïve. It is wrong for Christians to be taken in by con artists, the greatest con artist being the Devil himself. He may come as an angel of light, he prowls like a lion looking for dinner, and Christians must be wise as serpents, innocent as doves. And therefore we must insist on biblical decency, biblical kindness, biblical truth, biblical standards. All of our appeals to dictionaries and referees and rule books must have an ultimate appeal, and the name for that ultimate appeal is God Almighty. 

But there are very practical ramifications for our failure to insist on biblical definitions. And what I mean is that there are certain conversations that should not be happening. There are certain subjects for which the Bible requires a certain form of incivility. Hear me carefully: I’m not saying that a Christian has liberty to dispense with the fruit of the Spirit, but I am saying that the same Spirit that produces love, joy, and peace is also a sword that hacks certain sins to pieces. When Paul says to mortify your members which are on the earth, like say, fornication, the clear and obvious meaning of those words is: kill that sin. Treat that sin with utter incivility. You must not be civil with sin. You must kill it dead. To be civil with fornication is to grant fornication a place at the table. To be civil with adultery is to give adultery the right to exist. But adultery has no right to exist. It is a standing, defiant middle finger pointed at the God of Heaven – and to my point here: it is a standing, defiant middle finger pointed at a truly decent and civil society.

Do you want civil discourse? Do you want decency in the public square? Then there are certain conversations that should not be happening. There are certain conversations that grant legitimacy to their subject matter by virtue of them happening in calm tones around tables while sipping coffee. Jesus was not exactly looking for a “civil discourse” when He flipped over the tables in the temple. There are certain things that must not even be talked about: “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks” (Eph. 5:3-4). 

Paul does not mean that a Christian can never let these topics be spoken in any way, since Paul just listed them (named them) himself. What Paul means is that they must not be discussed as reasonable topics. They must not be considered or debated in a way that grants them any credibility or legitimacy. 

This whole topic is playing on a certain ambiguity with the word “civil” or “civility.” God does require that His people honor those around them as bearing the image of God. There is a sort of common “civility” that accompanies that recognition. But this civility cannot be detached from the law of God. When an armed intruder is shot by a homeowner, the homeowner is not being “civil” in one sense, and he absolutely is being “civil” in another sense. He is being civil in his duty to protect his family from harm. He is also being civil to the intruder by stopping him from carrying out far greater evil. The executioner who administers a lethal injection to a criminal who has been lawfully tried and convicted is acting with “civility.” He is (strictly speaking) carrying out the civil sentence against the criminal and upholding a standard of civility for his society. 

So this is why Gay Pride parades ought to be illegal. Drag Queen story hour ought to be illegal. And they should not be topics for discussion at city council meetings. They should be laughed straight off the docket. Freedom of speech does not include freedom to debauch the public square. Freedom of expression does not include freedom to flaunt obscenity. Why? Because allowing those kinds of debased expressions are attacks on decency itself, innocence itself, and civility itself. You cannot allow the incivility and indecency of simulated (or actually) sodomy or orgies or drag queens in public and then claim that you want civility and decency in the public square. When you let rampant, flamboyant sexual gutter-juice parade itself in public, you have already inshrined indecency and incivility in the public square and you are in the process of driving all decency out. You cannot allow public urination and defecation and claim freedom of expression and that everyone is free to be there. No, the public mockery of human decency and the exaltation of human degeneracy with #pridemonth and gay flags on every nicknack imaginable is the stench of an outhouse driving anyone with a sense of smell far away. And all that is left of the so-called public square can only be justly called a pubic square, a shameful and insidious joke on all of us.

Christians and all who love liberty must cultivate a godly incivility for those things which are clearly identified by God as direct and vicious attacks on a civil society. We instinctively know that we cannot be civil with murderers and rapists and at the same time be civil with their victims. In order to protect true civil discourse, and a truly civil society, there are certain discussions, activities, and events that must be outlawed and suppressed.

But in order to do this, appeal must be made to the dictionary. And when they bring their dictionary and breathlessly explain that ours is out of date, what will you do? Will you blush with embarrassment because now we are defined as hateful bigots? Or will you have the courage to pull out your Bible and say, “Thus says the Lord…” But this is the only way to protect true decency and civility in the public square. All attempts to guard this through appeal to human reason or a vague common good are scams. Those dictionaries were written by sharks and frauds, even though they left a bunch of Bible verses in there early on. Christian America, we’ve been taken in too many times. There is no neutrality. There is no decent common ground. The only common good is given by the only Good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is good, and if we will acknowledge Him, He will make our paths straight. Only He can give us a civil and decent public square. All other ground is sinking sand.

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Latte Worship & Latte Faith

One of the old dictums of the church is a Latin phrase lex orandi lex credendi: the law of prayer is the law of faith. Or, you could say, the way you worship and pray impacts how and what you believe. While it is true that believing in Christ drives you to worship Him; it is also true that as you worship Christ, you are educating your faith, discipling your faith, feeding your faith. How we worship the Lord here informs how we will think, live, and act out there. 

This is why we have wanted to cultivate a culture of joyful solemnity in our worship. And this really is something that takes work, practice, prayer, and attention. We do not want our worship to be stuffy, fussy, or pretentious. The Bible is clear: we are to enter into God’s presence with joy and thanksgiving. But the Bible is also clear that we may not enter into God’s presence in a casual manner, flippantly or thoughtlessly. We are to draw near to the Lord with reverence and awe and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. This is what we mean by a joyful solemnity. 

All of this is to encourage you to keep working at this with your people. Give thought to what you wear and how you prepare for worship. Many of you already do this, but maybe some of you have not given it much thought. We have no interest in dress codes or lists of rules, but remember that we are meeting with the King of the universe, so put on your Sunday best, whatever that may be, and not because you think you can impress Him or for the praise of man, but simply as an act of faith. And remember what sort of occasion this is: it’s common in some churches to sip a latte while watching the Sunday sermon, and we wonder why the Church is so weak. Latte worship produces a latte faith (and nothing against lattes). Remember, by faith we are ascending into the heavenly places to worship the King, to be fed by His word and at His table, to be commissioned as His Holy Armies. We are not here to be entertained, even if we are worshiping in a theater or a gym.

The law of worship is the law of faith. So come in faith, and come and worship.

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Fecund Civilization

Let me say something controversial.

Human civilization depends upon the existence of male and female, marriage, and procreation. 

I know. Jaw dropping. Where’s the panic button? Who let this hatred in here?

Wait. I’m not done yet. There’s more. 

The most valuable natural resource in all the world is people. And people come in only two varieties, male and female, and they are both necessary for the creation of new human beings. 

I think I just heard Al Gore’s pancreas pop. Pretty sure it’s not supposed to do that. Somebody help him.  

But this is all biological fact. It is pure science, straightforward logic, unyielding reality, confirmed and reaffirmed for six thousand years and counting. And we now find ourselves in the awkward position of wondering whether saying such things out loud is even allowed any more. We know where babies come from, and we know how they come, in one of two varieties, all binary-like. Yes, and all of this is also a theological fact, but it also has massive social, political, economic, and cultural results and ramifications.

Well, I might as well say something else controversial. 

In terms of historic, material cause and effect, heterosexual, life-long, monogamous marriage is the foundation for and driving force of free market economic prosperity.  

There are theological and spiritual foundations for free markets, but speaking of the immediate social foundation of free markets, we must begin with heterosexual, life-long, monogamous, and let’s use an F-word shall we? fecund marriage. Look it up. It’s a good word. Yes, of course people can result from one night stands and polygamous unions and everything in between, but do a simple survey and you’ll find dramatically different results. Everybody wants to pretend like it’s all random and inscrutable, but there are dramatic differences in the overall outcomes of children raised in stable heterosexual monogamous marriages and everything else. And yet, we are witnessing the attempted dismantling of this central institution before our very eyes. Of all the socio-economic insanities, this is near the top of the pile. Broken marriage vows give us rates of crime, substance abuse, violence, suicide off the charts. And yet the one thing we will not do as a society is protect that. We will throw money and education at anything but that. Anything but heterosexual, monogamous marriage.

The modern incarnation of what we call “the Left” or “secular liberalism” or so-called “progressivism” is simply and fundamentally a resolute hatred of the world as it actually is and the deep-seated demand that it be different, an obstinate quest to make it different, to remake the world into something else. This is partially reasonable and mostly insane. I say it’s partially reasonable as there is a fair bit about the world that is in fact wrong and has gone badly. Let us give them that. The leftists can see out their eyes, and they see disasters and disease and shootings and poverty and injustice just like you and me, but they have no coherent accounting for it. I’m not saying that they don’t actually see it, they simply can’t account for why it’s evil and wrong, and therefore they cannot have any reasonable or coherent answer to any of it.  Again, I’m not saying they don’t have any answer, or that every semblance of an answer is wicked or wrong, I’m simply saying they have no consistent, coherent answer to it.

If there is no transcendent, objective Good, Truth – what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, or what the great monotheistic religions have called “God,” then what, pray tell me, is our standard of judgment, our measure of progress? How can you measure better or worse, good or evil, just or unjust? The leftist progressive instinctively knows that rape is evil, but the leftist progressive cannot account for the category of evil, beyond human consensus or preference. But that amounts to morality by votes, which is neither dependable nor predictable and is therefore hardly a morality at all. In fact, morality by votes could just as easily be wicked injustice. Can’t you think of any cultural atrocities perpetrated by large majorities in the history of the world? Since when were mobs judicious?

The first two tenets of unbelief are (1) there is no god and (2) I hate him. And everything follows from there, and if you’re following me carefully here, the tenets are not exactly in agreement. The second tenet is an irrational response to the first. For if there is no god there is nothing and no one to hate. And if there is no god, you might as well love or sniff or ogle or blip or swashgluddle. If there is no god, there is no meaning, no reason, and these sensations, thoughts, ideas are all chaos and nothing burbling in the cosmos, and there is no good or evil, no justice or injustice, no such thing as love or hate, and certainly no such thing as progress or regress. Ok, sure, you can make-believe such things, but you have no accounting for them. You just have, like, your opinion, man.

This is why the LGBT-Equality Act agenda is not merely a small mistake, a little oops. The whole thing is trying to undo reality as God made it. Now first off, let’s be clear, they can’t actually unmake the world as God made it. They can put two boys together or two girls together as many times as they like and they will never succeed in creating a new human being. And putting a dress on a boy or mutilating the body of a girl doesn’t count. That’s just really lame. We all saw you do it. Nothing magical or amazing about it.

Since Darwinian chaos cannot create life, secular progressives are stuck with stealing, and this is why atheism, secularism, and progressivism will always tend toward socialism and communism and various forms of collectivism. It’s a worldview of theft, a politics of envy. They want the money that free enterprise makes. They want the children that heterosexual marriage creates. They want the joy that Christian forgiveness bestows. But they want it all without submitting to the God who created the world this way and sent His Son to save it. I’m not saying it’s impossible to be an atheist and believe in free markets, but I would say that an atheist who believes in free markets is doing so for more pragmatic reasons (it works) than transcendent belief, and that means that over time, it might also work to take a little off the top, cut a corner here or there, and pull the levers under the table. Why not? If it works, you might as well, right? 

But monogamous, life-long, heterosexual marriage is the foundation of supply-side free-market economics. And the central thing it “supplies” is people. And in a stable Christian marriage those people grow up to be productive producers, not only of more people, but also many other supplies of food and skills and artifacts and tools — multitudes of man hours of fruitful labor and what we call science, technology, education, and business ventures. And my entire point here is to simply say that Christians continue to embrace all of this unapologetically and we really must be busy reminding the world of these basic facts. Yes, it is the way God made the world. It is a theological fact, but it is also a scientific, sociological, political, and economic fact.

And so regardless of whether your local city council openly confesses Jesus as Lord (although they should), they do have a vested interest in the livelihood of their neighborhood, and part of the Church’s job is to disciple the nations in the facts. And the Lord Jesus has given us this moment, this opportunity to remind our neighbors, our mayors, our governors, our senators and judges, that heterosexual, monogamous marriage is the foundation of all free society. Whatever they make of the LGBT blitzkrieg, they must defend heterosexual, lifelong, monogamous marriage if they would defend civilization. They have a vested interest in boys growing up knowing that they are boys and girls growing up knowing that they are girls. Civil magistrates, CEOs, venture capitalists, college presidents, school superintendents, and anyone remotely concerned with the future have a vested interest in the stable and relatively reliable production of people that comes from Christian marriage.

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The Receipts on His Hands

This Last Thursday was Ascension Day, the 40thday after Easter, the day on which Jesus ascended into Heaven. The Christian Church has historically marked this Sunday to proclaim the Ascension of Jesus as a central and glorious aspect of our salvation. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, not only did He rise again from the grave, but He then ascended to the right hand of the Father where He sat down, having been given all authority and power and dominion. He sat down like no High Priest ever could, He sat down as the Mediator of the Great and New Covenant, offering in His own body, a pure sacrifice that never needs to be repeated again. A true man is in God’s presence now for us. The ascension of Jesus is the down payment and guarantee of our hope. Jesus was raised and He ascended into God’s presence in a glorified human body, but it is a human body just like yours and mine. 

So hear this good news this morning. Your salvation is no longer merely a promise, it has become reality. The promises of God have become flesh in Jesus Christ, and the Promises of God have been fulfilled in Him. God has set His Son, the King, on his holy hill of Zion. And He has given him the nations for his inheritance, the ends of the earth for His possession. China belongs to Jesus. Russia belongs to Jesus. Saudi Arabia belongs to Jesus. America belongs to Jesus. They belong to Him because He purchased them with His precious blood. And He sits in Heaven as their rightful Lord and King, and He intercedes for them there. His blood pleads for them. The scars in His hands and feet and side are still there, receipts of His purchased possession. And He is the sure Word of our salvation and the salvation of this whole world. And He gave us this meal to proclaim all of this until He comes. And so this is what we proclaim: Jesus died, Jesus rose, Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father where He reigns, where He intercedes, where He prepares a place for you and me. 

And until then He invites us here, to sit down at His table, to sit because He is seated, to sit with Him in the heavenly places. So, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.   

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Confessing the Nicene Faith

This week and next week we will be using the Nicene Creed when we confess our faith together (instead of the Apostles’ Creed as is our usual custom). The reason for this is that the Nicene Creed is one of our church’s confessional statements, and the elders decided last year that we wanted to occasionally review it and we chose Ascension Sunday (today) and Pentecost Sunday (next week) as the Sundays to do so. You will see that the Nicene Creed is very similar to the Apostles’ Creed, and this will make it kind of tricky. Unless you’ve previously memorized the Nicene Creed, you’ll probably want to follow along closely in the Bulletin this week and next week. A number of the phrases and lines are the same as the Apostles Creed and then a number of phrases aren’t – so just when you think you know what’s next, there’s something different.

The key places that are different from the Apostles Creed are expansions of who Jesus and the Holy Spirit are. The Nicene creed makes it explicit that Jesus is fully God and of one substance with the Father. And the Holy Spirit is also fully God since He proceeds from the Father and the Son and is worshipped and glorified with them. And the Creed insists that these three persons are the One true and eternal God. 

This really is not some kind of obscure theological point. It’s not merely important to confess the doctrine of the Trinity because the Bible teaches it (although that is true). The doctrine of the Trinity is also enormously important because it is another way of explaining the doctrine of our salvation. If Jesus is not fully God then He was not capable of actually bearing the full weight of God’s wrath against our sin. Not only that, if Jesus is not fully God, He cannot fully reconcile us to God. How do you know you are in fellowship with God? How are you sure? Part of the answer is that God Himself came for you in the person of His Son. If you know the Son, then you also know the Father. And the same point goes for the Spirit. The Spirit that fills every true believer is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Living God, such that the body of every believer truly has become the temple of the living God. God lives in you by the Spirit. 

So this is the glory of the Trinity, the glory of our salvation. And it was faithful and courageous Christians like Athanasius and St. Nicholas who stood for these truths when the whole world seemed to be against them. So when we proclaim the Nicene Creed, say it like you mean it, say it and stand against the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Say it and believe it with all your heart.

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