Tonight we continue a new study exploring the parables of Jesus. Last week we considered the Sower. Tonight- the Lost Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. We serve dinner at 6:15, and begin the study at 7:00. We also livestream on Facebook Live, on the account I share with Lisa, RC-Lisa Sproul. Typically, a day or so later, we post the study right here. Scroll down for previous studies. We’d love to host you in our home, or out in cyberspace.
An easy no. But wait, there’s more. Not only is the answer no, but the one raising the question/accusation has revealed an unfathomable level of ignorance/dishonesty. It’s a mute talking point brought to you by the ghouls who murder babies.
Those committed to protecting all babies are statistically far more likely to support needy families caring for born babies. As I often point out when privileged to preach outside abortion mills, “We who are here proclaiming Jesus to you, who are offering counsel, financial assistance, gifts in kind, are not paid. It costs you nothing. Those inside with you who are insisting we are the bad guys won’t do anything unless you give them the money. Whose counsel should you trust?”
This ridiculous trope has legs, not surprisingly, because of the unexamined statism in the one making it. Most people committed to the unborn are likewise skeptical of government assistance programs. We vote for candidates who at least pretend to want to stop the robbing of Peter to pay Paul, redistribution programs. I hope that part is true. What doesn’t follow, however, is that opposition to redistributing wealth puts one in opposition of all the Pauls receiving funds taken from all the Peters.
Do not flinch in the face of those who accuse you of being hypocritical for supporting legal protection for the unborn and not supporting cradle to grave welfare. Apples and apples. Because with the former we are seeking to protect the right to life. With the latter we are seeking to protect the right to private property. Nothing in the least inconsistent there.
I love it when the accusation gets even more personal. Many times I’ve been asked/accused “What have you ever done for a child that survived the womb?” My answer? “I’ve, along with my dear wife Lisa taken up the responsibility to meet all the material needs, every last one for the entirety of childhood. Also, we’ve taken up the responsibility to meet all the educational needs, every last one for the entirety of childhood. We’ve taken up the responsibility to meet all the spiritual needs, every last one for the entirety of childhood. All needs we either do or would provide.”
All this, and much, much more for two humans who were headed to their deaths. Who by His grace have now lived all their lives not as wards of the state nor wards of our family, but as members of our family. Their names are Reilly and Donovan… Sproul. Please note, however, that we did not do this simply to prove our bona fides as defenders of life. We do this because, as God promises in Psalm 127, these boys are deep blessings to us from His hand. They have rescued us.
This slanderous accusation, that we who love the unborn do not love the born, is fools speaking gibberish in a vain attempt to drown out their own consciences. Pay it no heed.
The Devil delights in false dichotomies. When he persuades us that our choices are between this foolishness and that weakness — heads, he wins; tails, the kingdom loses. When we are lukewarm in our commitment, when we think the kingdom of God is just some ethereal thing that no one can see, the Devil encourages us in just this direction. We see the kingdom as only future, and so sit on our hands waiting. Such is not, of course, a passionate seeking of His kingdom or His righteousness.
The Devil does not, however, fear kingdom zealots. He offers those whose passion burns to make known the reign of Christ a whole different temptation. The Devil encourages these to take up arms, to bear the sword. He seduces them into thinking they can make the kingdom come by force.
The first option denies we are at war. The second option denies that our weapons are not carnal. We, the Bible tells us, are at war and our armory is stocked with potent, spiritual weapons.
Consider first the reality of the war. God promised in Genesis 3: 14-15 that He would put enmity between the Serpent and the woman, between their respective seeds. Thus, we have an identifiable enemy — all those who are yet outside the kingdom of God. This enemy, of course, actively fights its war against us and our King. Thus, we are at war. The Lord calls us to tear down strongholds, to destroy every lofty thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. We are commanded not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed.
We also have an objective. Believers long to see the reign of our Captain made manifest the world over. We are seeking His kingdom. His promise is that a day is coming when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that He is Lord. Indeed, He will come from His throne, we are told, when all His enemies are made a footstool. The language of warfare fills the Word, from beginning to end, despite our crafty Enemy’s attempt to cry “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
Our Enemy, under no self-constraint, uses carnal weapons. Indeed, everything about his warfare is carnal. His spear pierced the side of our Lord. He hurled the stones at Stephen. The serpent worked through sundry caesars, leading the early Christians to the Colosseum for sport, lining the Appian Way with hundreds of crucified disciples of our crucified Lord. He animated the lies of Islam, whose scimitar first seized Jerusalem and later reached even into Europe.
The Devil, however, rejoiced more over the counterattack on Jerusalem than he did the seizure of it. That is, the greater victory wasn’t the success of the sword on his side of the battle but the taking up of the sword on our side. He wins lesss by fighting with carnal weapons but by seducing us into fighting with carnal weapons.
The Bible, of course, leaves room for legitimate use of force. The use of the sword in defense of our land or of our families is not only permissible but mandatory. But we do not build the kingdom with the sword. Our weapons are not carnal. The kingdom advanced far more potently through the humble martyrs’ deaths than it did through the fighting of the valiant soldiers of the Crusades. We don’t kill for the kingdom but die for it.
Barbarians are also at our gates. Our walls crumble, and it seems in the West that a new dark age is here. We find the evidence less in the rhetoric of the radical left, the cultural degradation pouring from New York and Hollywood, and the sexually confused marching in our streets, and more in the church that has lost sight of its God-given weapons. Believers move from defeat to defeat because we fight with coalitions, with media campaigns, with slick marketing, with compromise. We have washed away all our saltiness because we’ve forgotten how the kingdom comes.
We seek His kingdom as we seek His righteousness. The world is preserved, and the boundaries of the kingdom expand when we live as His children in simple, trusting obedience. The world is changed by changing diapers, by hugging wives, by doing chores diligently, and by singing joyfully. War is fought by peaceful countenances. Loyalty makes walls come tumbling down.
We do not, as the crusaders did, leave our hearths and homes, our wives and children, cross land and sea, and hack and poke with sword and spear. Instead we cross the room, pray blessing on our children, and dance with our wives. We sit at the table, eating the fat of the land, talking about the glory of His provision in all our days. Practicing true religion, we visit the orphan and the widow. We preach the Word in season and out. As we gather we break bread and we drink the cup. And the Serpent trembles in his bunker.
As little children, we know it is the little things that change everything. The Serpent’s kingdom is brought low when the servants of the King are lifted on high, in worship. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the gates of hell come tumbling down.
I want you to read this. Not because it reflects well on me, but because it reflects well on my beloved wife. She posted this on social media, at our shared Facebook account, RC-Lisa, accompanied by video of me preaching at our small church here in Fort Wayne, Sovereign Grace Fellowship.
As most of you know I do not have the reach I once had. Much of that is the understandable fruit of some grievous sins of mine. What I still have is a commitment to God’s Word, and the doctrines of grace. What I have even more than I had in my younger years is a passion to help us all understand more deeply the depth of our sin, the saving power of our Redeemer and the unshakeable love of our heavenly Father. When the audience shrinks, the message grows more personal and powerful.
Which is part of the reason why this means so much to me:
I have watched my husband be cut down by those who once claimed to love him. Watched him stand faithful to a calling God has never revoked. I have watched people who think they know the story pour out accusations, speculation, and careless words over a man they never truly understood. They accuse him, while all along the guilt belongs to the very ones casting stones.
And still, I have watched my husband remain faithful day after day. I have watched him rise, steady and unwavering, take my hand, and lead us forward even with a broken heart. This is what faithfulness looks like, what it means to endure without giving up. This is what it means to keep climbing with a heavenly perspective, rising above the Sanballats God has sovereignly allowed on a hard and holy road.
I am an eyewitness to the grace of God poured out over his life. I have seen mercy sustain him, truth preserve him, and strength come to him again and again from the hand of God. And through that same grace, I too have been sheltered, strengthened, and blessed.
His life is a testimony that God keeps His own. God sustains the man He has called. And no opposition from earth can overturn what heaven has ordained.
This, friends, is what a man longs to hear. Not that he has this gift or that. Nor that he provides so well. Not that he looks so good, or is so handy. What a Christian man wants is to know that the one person who knows him best, his wife, believes him to be faithful. Not just to her, but to the Lord who bought us. He wants to know that she sees his effort, along with his failures. A man of God wants to believe that his wife can see that he is a man of God.
Perhaps most of all, however, a man of God wants to know that those under his care know that they are under His care. Thank you my love for filling my sails, and for travelling with me through this journey.
Check out this week’s podcast. It has a little bit of everything. Quality ingredients, combined with love and technology. This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast
The doctrine of the simplicity of God provides a rather useful fence. The perfections of God are, of course, worthy of our excitement. Their infinity is staggering. In God’s simplicity His infinite perfections show themselves to be one, the glorious colors coming together in a blinding white. Whatever else we delightfully affirm about God, we must affirm that He is one.
It is the very point of the doctrine of simplicity, however, that we don’t diminish one attribute when we remember another. We don’t wax rhapsodic over God’s love, then throw a wet blanket by remembering, “He’s also a God of wrath.” God’s wrath doesn’t restrain the love of God, nor does the love of God restrain His wrath. Rather, in a profound way, they are one and the same thing.
There are some fairly obvious ways that we see this. Psalm 2 shows us the wrath of God coming for a specific reason. The kings of the earth will not kiss the Son. The love of the Son is what provokes the wrath of the Father. We see much the same on the Damascus road, as Jesus accuses Saul, “Why dost thou persecute Me?” Christ’s loving union with the Bride brings wrath on Saul. And in turn, that wrath brings forth love as Saul becomes Paul, a part of the Bride.
Love is universally loved. We who belong to the King rightly celebrate His love for us. But those outside the camp do not stay outside the camp because of a self-conscious rejection of love. Those who think the lost are lost because they have trouble accepting love have been accepting too many foolish bromides from pop psychologists.
The very “gods” the lost create, in their rejection of the Creator, are characterized by “love.” One can safely finish the idolater’s sentence, when he begins, “Well, my god is a god of … .” It’s love, every time. Have you ever heard someone object, when called to repent, “Well, I’m repulsed by your God that forgives the repentant. My god is a god of raging, irrational fury.” No. Everyone loves “love.”
But while love is not diminished by wrath, a love that excludes wrath is not a biblical love. The love clamored for by the lost is a wrathless love. But the love they crave is just unknown. While there is, rightly understood, a universal love of God that includes even those who will be damned, this love is a simple love, one that includes all that God is. There is no wrathless love that comes from God.
The Bible tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We find there what some theologians call “common grace.” God acts kindly to all men living. We all need to remember this. When we, or others, in trying to describe their anguish say their situation is “a living hell,” they misunderstand God’s patient love.
Any suffering on earth, save for His passion, is mitigated by His love, less severe than what is due, hell. But even the most wicked among us do not live their earthly lives exclusively in agony. Some unbelieving mothers genuinely rejoice when blessed with a child. Sometimes unbelievers win the Super Bowl and are genuinely happy about it. Even the heathen sometimes sit down to a favorite meal and feel real joy in eating it. Common love is common, love, and real.
Common love, or the universal love of God cannot be separated from common wrath. Because God is one you cannot wrap your arms around His love and miss His wrath.Though the lost will receive the loving gifts of God, they will neither honor Him nor thank Him, and so they earn His eternal wrath.
God’s love is not only inseparable from His wrath, but it is equally bound together with His sovereignty. That is, when God sends the rain to the unjust, He does so knowing that the unjust will not honor Him. But this doesn’t frustrate God. First, He planned it that way. And second, He planned it that way because of one more connection between love and wrath — God loves His wrath. He delights to manifest the infinite perfection of His wrath just as much as His love, because they are one thing.
This, in turn, must inform how we look at the world around us. The problem with the broader culture, that place where they love love, isn’t that they’ve embraced part of the truth, and that our job as sound Christians is to teach them the hard parts. Rather we have to understand that the love they love is no more love than the god they worship is God. Unless they embrace the true and living God, the God of love that is wrath, of wrath that is love, of both that are manifest sovereignly, they will perish. Biblical love requires that we tell the world that their love of their love will earn them only His wrath.
Tonight we continue a new study exploring the parables of Jesus. Last week was our introduction, and look at the lost sheep and lost coin. Tonight, the Sower. We serve dinner at 6:15, and begin the study at 7:00. We also livestream on Facebook Live, on the account I share with Lisa, RC-Lisa Sproul. We also, a day or so later, post the study right here. We’d love to host you in our home, or out in cyberspace.
