Tonight we continue a study exploring the parables of Jesus. Last week we considered the Good Samaritan. 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.
Our immediate impulse to pass a law against that which we oppose suggests we see the state as our god. It alone, we seem to reason, has the power to curb this evil or that. In God’s economy, however, there are many things we ought to oppose which at the same time we ought to oppose laws against those things. God did not give the state the power of the sword to punish all evil doings. We want our children to eat right. Do we, however, want to pay a fine for giving them too many cookies? We oppose coveting. We don’t call 911 when our neighbor confesses he envies our F-150 truck.
Civil laws, as God designed them, are not created to keep us from harming ourselves. Nor do they exist to police our feelings. It is not just or righteous for the state to prohibit its citizens from harming themselves with substances designed to impact their feelings. Some might wish for a world where alcohol is prohibited. Surely one can make a strong case that lots of bad things can be traced back to alcohol as a contributing factor. I get that. I’m not, however, arguing that marijuana use is a positive good for a given culture.
The same would be true, however, of tobacco, or nicotine. Precious few of us want to see tobacco outlawed. Whether we poll current users, former users or never users. A nasty habit? Yes, I believe most would agree. Unhealthy, to be sure. A leading contributor to millions of deaths, no doubt. A net cultural negative? Absolutely. A reason to put people in jail? I think not.
A different substance stands atop the heap of mood altering drugs around the world. Caffeine. Cue the sound of millions of toes being stepped on. Christians are expected to laugh when someone makes note of their caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Worse still, few of us behave in a Christ-like manner when going through caffeine withdrawal.
I’m not suggesting that the impact of illicit drugs like marijuana is equal to the impact of coffee and cigarettes. Rather I’m seeking to unpack and apply principles. We should be able to agree that a. “bad for you” is not sufficient reason to outlaw something and b. “bad things indirectly happen to other people” is not a sufficient reason to outlaw something. For all the destruction wrought by it, legal or otherwise, marijuana doesn’t meet the standard. Behaviors influenced by it often do. Which is why it is right to outlaw behaviors destructive to others, not outlaw the consumption of a plant.
Should Christians partake? We can’t argue that any substance that impacts a person’s mood makes that substance biblically illegitimate. The Scripture itself tells us that wine gladdens the heart (Psalm 104:15). It forbids drunkenness, but not a gladdened heart. Marijuana, on the other hand, I would argue, while relative amounts may create relative highs, doesn’t come with the kind of gentle heart gladdening that wine does. One can enjoy a glass of wine and be well clear of drunkenness. One cannot get stoned while being well clear of being stoned.
I take both of these positions, no, marijuana should not be illegal and no, Christians should not use it, loosely. While I do not partake of marijuana, alcohol, nicotine or caffeine I do confess that ice cream alters my mood, always in a positive direction. On the other hand, I hold fast to the truth that it is not a biblical function of government to make sure people don’t harm themselves. A little wisdom goes a long way.
Conservative Christians seeking a way to encapsulate our most fundamental political commitments came up with “family values.” We vote “family values.” We support “family values” candidates. Even the left has noticed, countering our language with this bit of bumper-sticker wisdom: “Hate is not a family value.”
We are indeed seeing an assault on the family from the left and are rightly troubled. They want to be able to redefine the family at will and by law, forgetting that the family is a gift from God and He retains the right to define it as He wills. Yet we know what a family is supposed to look like and don’t like it when others twist and distort that image.
That said, though I am a conservative Christian, though I do indeed believe in “family values,” my family doesn’t look like most because of our two at home. Reilly and Donovan are just the right size. But they do stick out. Or perhaps my dear wife Lisa and I stick out. Our two boys, at their births, came through the blessing of adoption. Their genetic ancestors hail from Africa. Our family, then, includes two genders, multiple ages, multiple eye colors, multiple abilities, multiple skin colors. However, we are, together, Sprouls. We have, by the grace of God, been made into a family, a forever family.
The kingdom we seek is the same. Our familial identity is found not in our skin color, our socio-economic strata, or our genetics. The kingdom we seek is populated not just by citizens or by soldiers, but by family. We are servants of the King, soldiers of the King, but most of all we are children of the King. We become children of the King not based on where we are born but through adoption.
It has been said that Sunday mornings are the most segregated hours of the week. Some in the evangelical church are so troubled by this that they have sought out people of color like trophies. Others, sadder still, prefer the segregation. Were we paying attention, we would be guilty of neither.
There was, after all, once a great Man. He gave a famous speech, a sermon if you will, that came to be known all over the world. There He suggested to the gathered masses that we ought not to worry about such things. He encouraged us to have such a single-minded passion for one thing that issues of skin color would be moot. He told those who assembled that they should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Fraternity is a wonderful thing. It is the theological left, however, that teaches the heresy that proclaims the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. If everyone is my brother, then no one is my brother. If ties of kinship extend to all humanity, then there may as well be no ties at all.
Wisdom requires that we learn how to recognize our brothers. I must confess that here I am not colorblind. My brothers are not those with black skin. Neither are they those with white skin. My brothers are those whose skin is red, covered by the blood of Christ. My loyalty is grounded in the kinship that I have in Christ, not the “kinship” that is coded into my genes.
In God’s good providence, I have been blessed to meet my brothers around the globe. Naing is my brother in Myanmar. Geoffrey is my brother in Kenya. Hiro is my brother in Japan. Oleg is my brother in Russia. Mykola is my brother in Ukraine. Jaime is my brother in Colombia. I have Kiwi brothers, Canuck brothers, Israeli and Palestinian brothers, and Scottish and Irish brothers. In Christ’s kingdom is every tribe and tongue. When we enter, we lay aside every petty loyalty, every insignificant tie that binds.
We fail when we are fools enough to believe that there is something of value in our own ethnicity. Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, saw his pedigree as something to be cast aside, tossed overboard. Can we do any less? We are by nature children of our father, the Devil. But while we— me, my wife, my children, all the saints of history, and all the saints around the globe—were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He has together seated us, red and yellow, black and white, in the heavenly places. There we rule the nations. There we will judge angels. And there we are, and will forever be, a family.
Which are two things, not one. The ground of our knowing is a question of ontology, or being. The beginning of our knowing is a question of epistemology, or how we know what we know. To understand the ground of our knowing we have to go back to the beginning. All the way back to the actual beginning, “In the beginning, God” (Gen. 1:1a). This verse, filled to overflowing with meaning, tells us that once there was God, and nothing else. He is the groundless ground of all other things.
Everything else that is, is because of Him. Including everything else that is true. Just as we live and move and have our being in Him, so does truth live and move and have its being in Him. Without Him there is no truth to know. There is no way to know. There is, without Him, no one to know anything. Truth is dependent on Him.
Which is not at all the same thing as saying that God is the beginning of our knowing. He is not. This in no way diminishes His power, His glory, or anything I highlighted above. It simply acknowledges what should be obvious, that our knowing must begin with us. Many times I’ve had friends try to plant their knowing flag in heaven itself by claiming, “I begin my knowing with God.” To which I, hopefully not too cheekily, reply, “’I begin with God’ begins with whom?”
When we claim that we begin our knowing with God we confess that we begin our knowing with us. No, I’m not beginning to equivocate on “begin.” “God is the one I begin with” doesn’t escape the problem. It’s not what goes in the front of the sentence; it’s where we start knowing.
When Rene Descartes coined his famous expression, “Cogito ergo sum,” “I think, therefore I am” he wasn’t merely affirming that thought meant a lot to him. It wasn’t the philosophical equivalent of bikers whose jackets say “Live to Ride; Ride to Live.” Rather he was making the same point I am making. His goal was to find a truth that could not be doubted. He discovered that were he to doubt even his own existence, it would require of him that he exist. Our own existence is indubitable.
The thinking then is not the ground of his existence. It was, however, the indisputable proof. In like manner, in order to affirm anything, including “I begin with God” one must first affirm, overtly or implicitly, but certainly first, “I am.” To put it a mite pithily, “I AM precedes I am but “I am someone who” precedes “knows I AM is.”
As with most philosophical considerations, most of us respond in one of two ways. Either we are bored because all we’ve done is affirm what we all already knew, or we are intrigued because we discovered some background on what we already knew. There are important implications that flow from all the above. They will have to wait for another day.
An interview with friend and author David Knight on his new book What it Means to Be a Christian. Plus, all the president’s memes, Hosea the prophet and lessons learned from falling towers. Tune in, and come out the other side the better for it. Or your money back, no questions asked.
When we know our end we know our calling for today. What is our end? We will, for all eternity, inhabit a redeemed world, the new heavens and the new earth. We will enjoy peace, plenty, a life utterly devoid of sin. And we will serve and sit under the King. Eternity is a monarchy and Jesus is its king.
That can be hard for us who are Americans to swallow. We, if we were poorly educated, rejoice in and give thanks for living in a democracy, a place where the people rule. Were we better educated we rejoice for living in a republic, a place where law, rather than people rule. In either case we buck against the notion of monarchy. We came into our own when we threw off the rule of George III, when the colonies declared themselves independent.
Our prejudices are confirmed when we read through the early history of Israel. After Judges we come to Samuel, the last judge in Israel.
The people came demanding they be given a king like all the other nations to rule over them. That’s where we plant our anti-monarchy flag. “See,” we say, “these foolish people want a king and it’s all going to go wrong for them.” God tells Samuel what the king will be like- he will send your sons off the foreign wars. He will take your daughters to work in his palace. And, as shocking and terrifying as this may be, he will tax you at a rate of 10%.
A more careful reading, however, will show us that the problem was not that Israel wanted a king, but that they wanted a king like all the other nations. God tells Samuel that they had not rejected him as their judge, but had rejected God as their king. They didn’t move from judges to monarchs, but moved from having God as their king to having a king like all the other nations. God gave them over to their desires, and we know how that went. His promise, however, His solution to the problem of Saul, was not democracy or a republic. His solution was a king, His king, David.
David, along with his son Solomon reigned in a golden age for Israel. Neither, of course, were in the least sinless. Both had much to repent for. But the nation reached its geographic, economic and militaristic pinnacle. Even the nation’s worship hit a high point with the building of the temple. From this point forward in their history the question no longer was monarchy or not, but became instead good monarchy or bad. And so it is in our own day.
Which is why the great Hebrew prophet reminds us, “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Kingship is unavoidable, woven into the warp and woof of reality. Because Jesus is Lord. This was, of course, the very first creed of the first century church, that affirmation in turn that lead so many to die the martyr’s death.
“Jesus is Lord” is not a mere wish. That is, saying “Jesus is Lord” is not on par with saying, “We’re number one” about our favorite team. Neither are we merely affirming that He is our Lord. When we come to embrace Him it is not strictly accurate to say that we make Jesus the Lord of our lives. We recognize that Jesus is Lord of our lives. We do not rise up to heaven to put a crown on His head, to seat Him on our throne. Instead we fall on our faces, and grasp that He always been our Lord; we had just been in rebellion.
Where we are going then is not to a future inauguration. “Jesus is Lord” is not affirming “Jesus will be Lord” but a present reality. What we yet await is the increasing recognition of His reign. First, as we grow in grace, as we become increasingly obedient we bring our own hearts, minds and hands into submission. His reign, however, is not simply over the church. The idea that “The kingdom of God is in our hearts” is true, not because it is not outside of our hearts, but because it is everywhere. That is, it is not only in our hearts.
Wherever there is a there, there Jesus reigns. Wherever there is a that, Jesus reigns over that. There is, as Abraham Kuyper wisely said, not one square inch of the entire universe over which Jesus does not declare, “MINE.”
Like our fathers, however, we don’t want the King, but a king, like all the other nations. We want to be ruled by our desires, our emotions. A king like all the other nations- a state that watches over us from cradle to grave. We want a king that will send our sons off to die in adventurous wars, and now, our daughters as well. A king like all the other nations, whose tax burden suggests that they own it all. We don’t want Jesus to rule over us, fearing that He is too cruel and exacting. Instead we want a king like all the other nations, whose tender mercies are most cruel.
The good news, however, is that our king is at work overcoming not just our enemies, but all within us that is displeasing to Him. When we cry out for a king like all the other nations we do so as subjects of the one King, who happily does not run a democracy. He brings subjects into His kingdom, and makes His subjects more subject.
Jesus is Lord. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto Him. His kingdom is forever, for He shall reign forever and ever. He is bringing all things under subjection, to the glory of the Father. We live in the midst of the greatest fairy tale every told. We are the evil hag that the Prince has married. And He has ascended to His throne. Which means, of course, that our story ends just as it ought- and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Tonight we continue a study exploring the parables of Jesus. Last week we considered the found treasure and the pearl of great price.. Tonight- the Good Samaritan. 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.
By reading well. Nothing too complicated about that. As with many good habits, the challenge is not that performing the habit is too hard, but that it is not easy enough. That is, we don’t like to exert ourselves. As with exercise, though, we know exertion reaps benefits that couch potatoes know not of. We could do it if we would do it. Here are four suggestions on how to whip that mind into shape.
1. Read good books. This could be three suggestions. First, read. I’ll agree that audio books knock the stuffing out of no books, but reading is better still. Fewer distractions for starters.
Second, good. There are many books that are fun, easy and not terribly helpful. There are many books that are boring, hard and terribly useful. But there are actually a fair number of books that are fun, easy and terribly useful. Read these. There aren’t enough hours in a life to slog through brilliant minds attached to dusty writers. Here’s a lightning quick list right off the top of my head of those who are both profitable and a joy to read- CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, RC Sproul, JRR Tolkien, PG Wodehouse. And that’s just from the initials section of the library.
Third, books. It’s all well and good to read journals, blog pieces. But books are better. As one great writer once told me, “Son, articles can change your day. Books can change your life.”
2. Read widely, in theme and time. Which brings us back to “good.” I’ve read wonderful books about climbing Mount Everest, the University of Washinton rowing team, Area 51, America’s first serial killer and the rise of the twelve tone scale in music. Not because I knew anything going in. Not because I hungered for more knowledge on these things. But because the writers could write like really great writers.
CS Lewis’ essay, “On the Reading of Old Books” which is found in his collection of essays, God in the Dock, and as the introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation makes an excellent case for escaping the water we swim in by visiting the waters of other eras. Reading beyond our contemporaries exposes the blind spots of our own age.
3. Read fiction. I read my fair share from the fun, easy and not terribly useful pile. These are mostly disposable who-done-its, some cozy and some creepy. But there are plenty of fine fiction writers that contribute to shaping the mind. The aforementioned Wodehouse is the absolute master of the rhythm of writing. And reading him feels like summer vacation. Literary classics tend to be high in both value and ease of reading. Give Hawthorne a try, Anthony Burgess, John Updike. Many of the prep-school classics fit in here. The Old Man and the Sea, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, The Count of Monte Christo, A Tale of Two Cities.
4. Take your time. This isn’t a crash diet, but a change in lifestyle. Develop the habit. Going somewhere you know you’ll be waiting? Bring a book. Having trouble sleeping? Pick up a book. Is it raining when you planned to mow the lawn? Pick up a book. Remember that the goal is not to stoically take up another duty but to learn to enjoy.
I’d love to hear in the comments books/authors or themes you’d suggest.
Obedience is a rather narrow road. Disobedience, on the other hand, comes with a great, sweeping plain of options. Because we are like the Pharisees, we find it easy to convert the law of God into sundry sins of omission. We’re much better at not doing what we’re not supposed to do than we are at doing what we’re supposed to do. Thus, we reduce the Sabbath to all the things we’re not allowed to do. We work at fine-tuning the definition of “work” so we can make sure we don’t do it on the Sabbath. In so doing, as is our wont, we miss the point.
Were we to divide the Ten Commandments not according to duties toward God and duties toward man, as many do, but instead on the basis of prohibitions and commands, the Sabbath commandment would end up with the commands. It is less about what we are forbidden to do and more about what we are commanded to do.
First, believe it or not, the Sabbath commandment commands us to work. “Six days shalt thou labor” isn’t an interesting prelude designed merely to set the context for the command to come. It is a command in itself. We’re supposed to be busy with the work set before us. To be passionately pursuing the kingdom of God. We are to recognize that we live in the not-yet of the kingdom. Not all enemies have yet been made a footstool. We have not yet fully exercised dominion over the creation. The reign of Jesus is not yet universally recognized.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “How does Christ execute the office of a king?” Its answer: “Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to Himself, in ruling and defending us and in restraining and conquering all His and our enemies.” As we rule with and under Him, this is the work we are called to — seeking His kingdom, making manifest His reign.
Second, as the Sabbath commandment moves to the day of observance, it does not command that we refrain from work — it’s far more profound: we are to rest. We think we are keeping the commandment if we refuse gallantly to do any of the work that is piling up and causing us to lose sleep at night. Instead, we are sinning. Rest isn’t just ceasing from working; it is also ceasing from worrying. It’s not easy. Indeed, in a manner of speaking, rest, especially ceasing from worry, is hard work. It takes discipline and fortitude to let go of all that has us worried.
We have not succeeded if our worries are more pious, either. That is, we aren’t failing to keep the Sabbath when we worry about the big meeting at work on Monday, but successfully keeping it when we are worried about our persistent failure to mortify that particular sin that so troubles us. Worry is worry, and it has no place in our Sabbath celebration. The Lord’s Day is a feast day and should be treated as such.
We rejoice and we get over our worries when we come to understand that the Lord’s Day is that time when we leave the “not yet” of the kingdom, and enter into the “already.” Is it not the case that the defining quality of eternity is the blessing of drawing near to the living God? When we feast at His Table, is He not declaring His blessing upon us? Is He not blessing and keeping, making His face shine, being gracious unto us? He lifts up His countenance on us, giving us peace.
When we worry about the more mundane things, we are failing to heed the call of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to set aside those worries, to not be like the Gentiles. We are called instead to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. When we worry about more spiritual matters, especially our own sins, we are missing the very heart of all Lord’s Day preaching — we, the repentant, are forgiven in Christ. We have, by His sovereign grace, succeeded in our quest — we have received His righteousness.
Sabbath, then, is shalom, and shalom is Sabbath. We have rest because we have peace and peace because we have rest. We have both because Jesus is not just Lord of the Sabbath and the Prince of Peace but is also our Sabbath, our Peace.
There is a right way to keep the Sabbath in our context. There is a right answer to the questions that divide us- is this allowed or that; this day or that day. In the end, however, whatever positions we take the key question is ultimately the gospel question: Are we resting in the finished work of Christ?
The most faithful Sabbath keeper will in the end be the most joyful Sabbath keeper. Sabbath, in the end, isn’t something to be observed but something to be celebrated. And we celebrate not merely a day off from work. We celebrate the victory of our King. We are of good cheer, for He has overcome the world. And we reign with Him.
