Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 71

Beware Revoice Bearing Gifts

[image error]A friend recently asked me why I thought the Revoice Conference had any traction at all in the conservative Reformed world, why it wasn’t dismissed out of hand, and sent packing. Why haven’t all the bigwig Reformed gate keepers issued straightforward condemnations? How could Bible-believing people possibly think that a conference with a workshop wondering what “queer treasure” will be in the New Jerusalem would be a good idea?

When my friend asked me, I said that I suspected that at least part of the answer lies in the fact that the conservative evangelical and Reformed world has been embattled. But as I’ve thought about further, I think I need to revise that statement to: because we have cultivated deep feelings of being embattled. We have been (apparently) holding ground for a number of decades, specifically on the infallibility and authority of Scripture, with substantial forays in the Pro-life cause, but the enemies of God continue to amass in front of us and they are slowly but surely taking the field. And in recent years, their audacity has increased. To go from Bill Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to the Obergefell decision in 2015 demonstrates the dramatic sea change (at least out loud in public).

So conservatives feel very beleaguered, battered, tattered, and worn, and in the middle of the fray, some conservative reinforcements arrive explaining that they have struggled with “same-sex attraction” but they are fully committed to the historic, biblical sexual ethic. It’s easy to see how this could initially sound like the cavalry had arrived. Think about it: all the “born this way” rhetoric for years insisting and demanding that it is utter cruelty and hatred to deny LGBT+ the way they were created. And to suddenly have folks coming out of the woodwork saying that they too have felt the tug of that homosexual orientation but God has given them grace to deny those desires and live celibate lives of chastity. It sounds like just the thing to finally have an answer for the extreme leftist revolutionaries. Take that, you liberals: we have people with what you say you have, and they say they can submit to God’s Word. Seems like a silver bullet.

But when you’re tired of fighting, or at least tired of feeling like you’ve been fighting, you are susceptible to many things, including random wooden horses the size of a house showing up at your gates.

And beware of Revoice Greeks bearing gifts.

Now before I briefly explain why I think the Revoice Thang is a Trojan horse and not actually reinforcements for the battle, I would like to point out one startling exception to what I’m about to lay out, and that would be Rosaria Butterfield. I haven’t read or listened to everything she has put out in the last few years, but what I have seen and heard seems to me to actually be reinforcements to the cause. But this is because while she understands the draw and temptations resident in the homosexual movement, is truly sympathetic and compassionate toward that community, she has not minced words about the sinfulness of sin, the power of God’s grace, and the call to sexual fruitfulness.

But the Revoice & the Spiritual Friendship folks are a Trojan horse bringing enemies into the church under the guise of biblical fidelity. And you can tell this because they have immediately claimed mantles of prophetic authority.

As Nate Collins said at the Revoice Conference:

Is it possible that gay people today are being sent by God, like Jeremiah, to find God’s words for the church, to eat them and make them our own, to shed light on contemporary false teachings and even idolatries, not just the false teaching of the progressive sexual ethic, but other more subtle forms of false teaching?

Douglas Wilson has pointed out over the years that there is a massive difference between evangelists and refugees. The Church should have open arms and a welcome sign for every refugee from the world. But if a refugee shows up and immediately wants to begin telling you how you aren’t doing this Church thing right, your pastoral vibe-o-meter should start sparking. The drug-refugee, the greed-refugee, and the sexual immoral refugee are welcome as refugees, truly seeking shelter and help. But they are not welcome to positions of authority the next week. They are not welcome as evangelists, apologists, or prophets. But this is precisely what the Revoice folks are asking for. They are not merely asking for shelter in the Church, they are asking for the right to speak authoritatively on the nature of sexual sin, purity, friendship, chastity, etc. This is not humility; this is blind arrogance masked with pious sounding phrases like “costly obedience.”

But the fact that this kind of evil has made it this far tells us that the conservative evangelical and reformed world is not nearly as embattled as we think. No, we talk like we have been fighting and killing giants and orcs, but turns out we haven’t been nearly so faithful. We are deeply compromised. We may have been running around in the woods near the giants and orcs. We might have even accidentally run into two or three on accident and shot a few arrows off, but we have not been straight up fighting them. You know this because you do not get to this point in the story under God’s blessing. How do you get swept from the field? How do you have conferences like this with nary a peep? You get to this point with deep rot all the way down in some of the very institutions and ministries that many of us look to for some semblance of biblical courage and fidelity.

And not incidentally, this the same problem Nate Collins and Revoice fans have. They have cultivated the feeling of being embattled as so-called “sexual minorities” and are so very tired of all that. But feeling tired of talking about fighting sin and temptations is not at all the same thing as actually fighting sin and temptation. And the former is a great setup for compromise. In other words, in a mess this big there is more than one Trojan horse at work. And so in this sense, the failure of Revoice is a great mirror for the evangelical and Reformed Church as a whole.

“How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?” (Deut. 32:30) We are not embattled; we are on the run. And this is because we have been sold. We have hundreds of thousands, millions even, of confessional, Bible-believing Christians, and we have been chased by nine men in black robes for decades. We have been chased by a few men with money, by a few men with power. And they let up the pressure occasionally just long enough to give us the illusion that we are actually putting up a fight, just long enough for us to work up a few good feels of fatigue and battle weariness, just long enough for us to be mentally prepared to take the next offer of compromise.

Wait for One Another

[image error]“My brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another” (1 Cor. 11:33).

Here, Paul is addressing problems that sometimes arise at the Lord’s Supper. In particular, he is urging the Corinthians to evaluate themselves, to judge themselves so that God doesn’t have to. Paul urges the Corinthians to discern the Lord’s body in one another, by paying attention to making sure everyone is served. Wait for one another.

The principle is one of hospitality. We are sharing the Lord’s Supper, and if we want it to actually be the Lord’s Supper, we need to discern the Lord’s body in one another. The Lord’s Supper is not a solo event, just you and Jesus jamming. The Lord’s Supper is a community event, a covenantal meal. This is why people who try to celebrate the Lord’s Supper all by themselves are not really celebrating the Lord’s Supper. It’s a meal that embodies what it proclaims. We are proclaiming the Lord’s death that is reconciling all things in heaven and on earth, and we embody that reality by our fellowship together, by looking out for one another. There are lots of ways this needs to be lived out in our community, but let me point to just one this morning.

There are a number of students, student families, as well as a number of newer families here with us this morning. And we want to welcome you in particular. We know that we are a large congregation, and God has blessed us with the kind of fellowship that really is sweet. We love being around one another, talking to one another and fellowshipping. But we really don’t want any of that to seem like you aren’t welcome to join in. You most certainly are welcome here, and we want to meet you and get to know you. And this is one of the reasons we have added another service here at the fieldhouse. We want you to be able to find parking, seats, and maybe also more quickly recognize a few faces each Lord’s Day.

And to all the old regulars, let me remind you that this is what the Lord’s Supper means. It means hospitality. It means welcome. And so as we wait for one another to be served, remember that this means that we are called to look out for one another, to welcome one another because God in Christ has welcomed us.

So Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ.

 

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He Does Far More

[image error]“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9).

This promise is staggering. It’s a business deal that makes no sense. We confess the sins we know about, and God forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

This is like a little kid coming into the house having played in the mud, and he’s covered head to toe in it. And at some point he looked down and suddenly noticed that his hands were looking pretty grimy. He trots into the house and sees his dad and says, dad, can you help me wash my hands? And the dad looks at him with a big grin and says, you bet, son. Let’s toss you in the bath.

The kid only sees his hands, but the dad sees all of the mud, all of the grime. The kid asks his father to help him get his hands clean, but his father is intent on getting him entirely clean. And so God is with us. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”

If God made a complete list of the sins of any one of us, it would crush us. But God in His mercy takes our baby steps of sanctification and rewards them with far more than they deserve. When we humble ourselves and truly ask him to forgive, He does far more.

But this has massive ramifications for how we treat one another, for how we forgive one another. You serve the God who gives you far more than you ask. He forgives you far more than you know. He does not mark every iniquity. When we come to him with dirty hands, He doesn’t lecture us on exactly how filthy and ridiculous we look. He receives us with joy because we are beginning to notice our sin because we are beginning to confess it. Because we are beginning to learn to humble ourselves.

God has incredibly high standards. The standard is perfection and holiness. But God is also incredibly patient and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and mercy. This is what we are aiming for in our community: high standards of excellence and faithfulness and piles of patience and mercy for those who fear Him.

 

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Expectations with Grace to Match

[image error]Parenting middle schoolers can be challenging. Middle schoolers are beginning to look at lot like adults and yet they still don’t act completely like adults. They are smart, getting good with words, jokes, and beginning to really understand important and difficult topics. And they are a typically hungry to learn, to be included in adult conversations, and they often want to participate more and more in decision making.

There are also immaturities and follies and sin.

But here’s the thing to remember: there are also immaturities, follies, and sin in their parents. And nevertheless, those parents are entrusted with the teaching and training and discipline of those young people. Pretty scary. But it’s also really exciting if God will give us the eyes of faith to see what He is doing in this moment.

One of the places parents can go wrong is when we do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes clear and explicit sin and disobedience on the one hand and immaturity and sloppiness on the other.

So for example, a son may be trying to correct a younger sibling but it may come out very condescending or maybe even mocking. But maybe that son really was trying to help his younger sibling. That isn’t disobedience or blatant sin. It might have been sloppy on all sorts of counts, but that attempt at correction was actually an attempt at obedience. He should love his siblings and care for them and correct them. And this attempt at obedience should be distinguished from the middle school boy who is simply terrorizing his younger sibling. That would be sin and disobedience. Sin must be addressed and dealt with directly, but immaturity and sloppiness needs encouragement.

If parents aren’t careful they can actually squash attempts at obedience when what the middle schooler needed was a quick and cheerful encouragement to try it again or suggest different words to use. This is cheering them on and building them up. But parents are sinners, and we are tempted to lose heart or despair or be overly perfectionistic or just plain impatient or ungracious, especially when both scenarios can be happening at various points in the same day. One moment a daughter might be honestly trying to help her mother by offering an alternative theory or plan for something, but maybe it comes out sounding disrespectful, and then an hour later, a bad attitude might come out. The former needs encouragement, the latter needs measured correction. Keeping these two categories straight in your mind can clear away a whole host of unnecessary complications and hurt feelings.

And always remember that it is entirely possible to respond to immaturity with immaturity, or respond to sin with sin. Adult immaturity/sin may look more grown up than middle school immaturity/sin, but it’s still immaturity/sin for all that. And as I noted above, parents are tempted to sin frequently by panicking, despairing, or fearing. It may be that our middle schooler really and truly sinned. It really was a bad attitude or a disrespectful tone. But that is no excuse for you to sin by being frustrated, panicking, despairing, or imagining your visits to the state penitentiary in a few years. Remember, your middle schooler is smart enough to know when you are frazzled, when you are frustrated, when you are distressed, and in most cases, that really is distressing to them. But remember, one of the terrifying things about being a parent is that you never get to not be teaching. That was a double negative so let me say it again positively: you are always teaching. So if your middle schooler has responded with sinful or immature emotion or drama to some situation, the first priority in your mind should be to make sure that your own words and emotions are being governed by the Spirit.

Because our children are beginning to look and act like adults in some ways, it can be tempting to expect them to understand and be fluent in all sorts of adult assumptions and signals and protocols. But remember they are still 13. They are still getting used to using words, expressing differences of opinion, correcting others, using different tones of voice or facial expressions, or telling jokes. But they have only been in this world for 13 years. This isn’t an excuse for sinful behavior or rudeness at all, and of course there are any number of things they should know about words, jokes, and facial expressions after 13 years in this world, and on the whole, I do believe parents should have very high expectations for their children. But sometimes Christian parents can be the worst at having high expectations and so little grace to go with them. But we should have high expectations and be exceedingly patient and gracious. We should have high expectations and grace to match it. Because this is how God the Father is with each of us.

“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him” (Ps. 103:13 ESV).

 

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Mars Rise

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We smoke at Mars rise

Gaze into the South black

Troops poised, bad battered

Spit praying cloud curls

Into heaven’s earth turn

Gaping on its tired side

Blinking visions, iron vows

Shape filled, laser tagged,

Brandishing a million eyes,

Sharp sons, bleak born,

Mercy broken every morning.

 

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When He Moved In

[image error]The Christian faith is an embodied faith. We share this bread and wine, and Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood, do this in remembrance of me. So we share this bread and this wine week after week, which represents God’s embodied love.

While there is a great deal about our bodies that we are still learning about and that is still very mysterious, there are also some simple, easy lessons for us. We are created in the image of God, we are created male and female, we are created hungry and thirsty, we are born and we live and we die. These are some of the indisputable facts that our bodies proclaim. Of course this doesn’t stop people from trying to dispute them. We evolved. Who’s to say what male and female really is? And people are trying to grasp sovereignty over fertility, health, and live forever by the power of science and technology.

But here, we have the death of Jesus for our life. We have God become man to stand in our place as the truest man there ever was. And He gives His life as bread and wine, and whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood will live forever.

And my point is simply that our bodies – even though they are ravaged by sin – are parts of God’s good creation. God is talking to us in them every day, and we are either believing and obeying God or disbelieving and disobeying God in and with these bodies. But these bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit. You cannot separate your walk with God from your body. And part of this is really very humbling: but God, it’s a mess in there. And part of this is also really very comforting: He knew it was a mess when He moved in. Which is all just to say: we are all just people with bodies and God knows what He’s doing and it’s all grace.

What is man that God is mindful of Him? The son of man, that God visits Him. He has made us a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

 

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You Are Holy Space

[image error]“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb. 12:22-24).

In the Old Covenant, God taught His people to think about holiness in terms of space. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were barred from going back into the Garden. When Moses saw the burning bush, He could only draw near to God when He had taken off his sandals. And when the tabernacle and temple were constructed, Israelites had to be careful that they did not draw near if they were in a state of uncleanness, only the priests could go into the holy place, and only the High Priest could go into the Most Holy Place one day a year. Holy space is fiercely guarded by God.

In the New Covenant, holy space is centered in the bodies of believers. Peter says, “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up into a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices” (1 Pet. 2:5). Paul says, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19).

So who are you? Why are you here? You are here because you were bought with a price, because you are not your own, because you belong to God, because you are the holy people of a holy God. You do not belong to your past. You do not belong to your sin. You do not belong to your pain, to your regret, to your success, to your accomplishments. You belong to Jesus. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, set your minds on things above where your life is, where Christ is seated in all glory and honor and majesty for you.

So you are summons now to draw near with boldness, to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.

 

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The Work God Calls Me to Now

“This is the work that God calls me to now, and I must consider God to be most honored when I do the work that he calls me to; he set me to work in my prosperous estate to honor him at that time in that condition, and now he sets me to work to honor him at this time in this condition. God is most honored when I can turn from one condition to another, according as he calls me to it. Would you account yourselves to be honored by your servants, if when you set them about a work that has some excellence, they will go on and on, and you cannot get them off from it? However good the work may be, yet if you call them off to another work, you expect them to manifest enough respect to you, as to be content to come off from that, though they are set about a lesser work, if it is more useful to your ends. In the same way you were in a prosperous estate, and there God was calling you to some service that you took pleasure in; but suppose God said: ‘I will use you in a suffering condition, and I will have you honor me in that way.’? This is how you honor God, that you can turn this way or that way, as God calls you to it.”

-Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 99.

 

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Broken & Blessed

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16)

Our life in Christ is celebrated here at this table every week. And we celebrate by breaking bread and blessing wine. He was broken to make us whole. By His stripes we are healed. We break and we bless.

In the history of the Christian Church, we have tended toward one of two ditches. On the one hand, Christians have tended to emphasize the brokenness, and on the other hand, Christians sometimes emphasize the blessing. Churches that camp out on the brokenness may seem welcoming to the broken, but they don’t often move past the brokenness. They don’t seem to acknowledge actual healing or progress in Christ. Churches that camp out on the blessing can seem optimistic and mature, but they often seem to ignore real brokenness and sin, and they can appear to be places where the broken are not welcome.

But the glory of being in the body Christ is that God has accounted for both of these realities, and He teaches us to hold them together here at this meal. Together we have deep scars and brokenness, and together, we have enormous blessing and growth in grace. And we need one another. No one in this room has moved beyond the need for God’s grace. There are no perfect husbands, wives, parents, children, roommates, employers, employees in this room. We break this bread because He was broken for us because we are broken. But He doesn’t leave us there; He has also determined to bless us. Despite our sin and failures, God is working in our brokenness an eternal weight of glory. In our halting, stumbling, fumbling attempts to follow Jesus, God is giving us the inheritance of His Son Jesus. He’s giving us His obedience, His wisdom, His faith, His joy, and by the time He’s done, He will have given us the world. So we break bread, and we bless wine – this is our communion in Christ. We are broken and we are blessed. This is the offer of the gospel.

So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

 

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Loving Much

“Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” (Lk. 7:47)

Jesus says these words at a meal with Simon the Pharisee when a woman shows up and begins washing Jesus’ feet with her hair and tears and anointing his feet with oil. What this woman does is unseemly, awkward, strange, and Jesus calls it love.

It is easy to forget that we serve the God who loves to save sinners and therefore He loves simple obedience from the heart. In fact, He loves halting, tripping, fumbling, awkward obedience from a full heart more than He loves astute, organized, proper, well-mannered, and well-executed obedience out of sheer grit-your-teeth duty. God would rather hot dogs with hearts of joy than fine wine with a critical spirit. God would rather simple songs with true and loyal hearts than complex harmonies with fussy hearts.

Now, people say this is and immediately start justifying their apathy and laziness. That’s why we don’t spend much on Christmas. That’s why don’t do family vacations. That’s why we only eat hot dogs.

But here’s the deal: that’s a bad attitude. God loves it when we give him our best from full hearts. The widow gave all that she had, and that was more than some who gave more money. But the point isn’t to settle for two mites, and the point isn’t to try to figure out how much would equal a really full heart, as though love can be added up like that.

The point that Jesus makes is that when you know how horribly you’ve sinned, when you know how shameful you have been, how guilty you were, and how costly God’s grace was, it hits you like a ton of bricks. You don’t care what it looks like. You don’t care what anyone thinks. You’re like that leper in the gospel who seeing that he’s been cleansed turns back, glorifying God with a loud voice and falling at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.

It’s that heart that Jesus loves. He wants that heart helping with the dishes, that heart cleaning up your bedroom, that heart teaching and disciplining your children, that heart interacting with your unbelieving neighbors.

You’ve been forgiven so much. So go, and love much.

 

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