Thesis 70- We must sing the songs of our fathers.
It is easy, too easy, to confuse revolution and reformation. The former pulls up our history by the roots and tosses it onto the compost heap. The latter reshapes, remolds, reforms what has been given to us. Reforming the church, in the 16th century and in the 21st doesn’t mean scrapping everything that’s gone before and starting all over. It means preserving all that is precious that has been handed down to us, while scraping off the barnacles of cultural accretions.
It has been said, by someone far more cynical than me, that the average evangelical believer thinks church history began with their conversion, while the more astute evangelical believer knows how silly such an idea is, and believes instead church history began with Billy Graham. Marshall Mcluhan would understand. Mcluhan labored to disabuse us of the notion that forms carry no content, arguing instead that the medium is the message. When all the songs that we sing in praise to our king were written in and to our own generation we will, unintentionally, even unconsciously reach the conclusion that we did in fact start the fire, that the church began with us.
I am not here arguing against contemporary music. I am not suggesting that drums are of the devil. Instead I am arguing for old music, music that will not only remind us of the rich truths it contains in its lyrics, but will, simply by being old, remind us that our fathers likewise walked in God’s grace, that they built upon foundations laid by their fathers and their fathers before them.
Consider the old 100th. This song, sometimes called “All People that on Earth Do Dwell” was that hymn sung on the Mayflower when it made landfall at Plymouth Rock. Our fathers in the faith, who came to this land to worship freely, sang that song 400 years ago. If that’s not enough for you, consider this. This same song, the Old 100th, with a different title and a different melody, in a different language but with the same words, was sung by the redeemed 4,000 years ago. The Old 100th isn’t the hundredth hymn in some old English hymnbook. It is Psalm 100 in the ancient Hebrew hymnbook. It’s difficult to forget all who have gone before us when we are singing their songs.
Remember, I’m not arguing against contemporary songs. We sing contemporary songs often at Sovereign Grace Fellowship. I’m arguing instead for a well-balanced diet, even when part of that diet tastes strange to those weaned all their lives on pop music. We ought not to ever look down our noses at our fathers. We ought instead to look up into the heavens where they reside, where they, day in and day out, sing praises to our Redeemer. King David, Saint Columba, Luther, Bach and with eyes wide open, Fanny Crosby all sing together, and are joined in that heavenly chorus by all people that on earth do dwell, who sing to the Lord with cheerful voice, Him serving with mirth, His praise forthtelling. Come ye before Him and rejoice.
Tonight, 7 eastern, we continue our ABCs of Theology Study, looking at K is for Kingdom. All are welcome in our home or on FB live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We pray you’ll join us.
Of course He does. I have noted before that I have walked through a change in my thinking with respect to charismatic gifts. I once described myself as a leaky cessationist. I meant by that that in principle I agreed with the cessationist position, but that of course I need to leave room for God to be God. My own father experienced multiple unusual experiences where God seemed to be communicating to him. I now describe myself as a cautious continuationist. That means that I agree in principle with the continuationist position but leave room for a healthy skepticism of the often tough to swallow claims of some charismatics.
What I find interesting, however, is where both groups agree with each other. Precious few cessationists are water, or Spirit tight in their thinking. When my father would recount hearing God tell him, when he was a young teenager, and before he was even a believer, that He was going to send him around the world teaching people about Him, and that he should take Vesta, I don’t think even John MacArthur would wince.
At the same time, happily there are precious few charismatics in the world who insist that we all append their revelations to the back of our Bibles. Apart from cult leaders, charismatics agree with cessationists that the canon of Scripture is closed, that whatever experiences they may be having, it is not the same thing as what happened to the Apostle John on the island of Patmos. Even continuationists believe that infallible canon revelation has ceased.
Which means, doesn’t it, that we’re really not too terribly far apart? We all agree that God can, in one way or another, communicate to us. Even the Bible itself says that the Spirit testifies to our spirit that we really are the children of God. Not that God has children. Not that we are called to be His children. That we, we whose literal names are not literally in the Bible, are literally His children. That is God speaking to us. Even cessationists believe that God continues to speak to us. Some of us believe He reveals things through dreams and visions. All of us believe in testing the spirits. Some of us believe we can feel checks in our spirits. All of us believe in being Bereans. Some of us believe we have been given a message God wants us to give. All of us believe we have heard, even if spoken from a man, a message that God wanted us to receive.
I believe sometimes people try to rationalize their sins or bolster their opinions by suggesting God told them something God didn’t tell them. I believe sometimes people try to hide from a message from God for fear that it might mean they have to repent or might make them look weird. I believe we should show the same grace we would like to receive to both kinds of people. I believe we should be careful how we speak, especially when speaking of how we believe God spoke to us. I believe we should be careful how we judge, especially when speaking of how others believe God has spoken to them.
Circumstances, under God’s sovereign hand, can and do change. The shadows have passed away with the coming of Jesus. The canon has closed. God, however, is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is there, and He is not silent.
Revivalism is marked by a commitment to technique. It is an essentially man-made phenomena, driven by the wisdom of men. We are a people bent on bending the will of others to our own liking. Advertising is the medium of our age. What determines who will be our nation’s leaders, when it is not one of those rare occasions in which the courts decide, is marketing. Money is raised by political candidates for one fundamental purpose, advertising. Even the more high-brow approach of political debate has devolved into a charade, where candidates are concerned not with a carefully reasoned defense of the policies they are committed to, but instead labor to project a particular image, where a history of smirks are overcome with charm, and a history of wonkism is undone by appearing as an “alpha-male.”
NEW and IMPROVED!
All our lives are spent in an endless stream of consumer decisions, with the masters of Madison Avenue trying their best to pull our strings. It’s all about technique, and the church, as is its wont, has swallowed the bait. We have succumbed to the advertisers’ advertising, believing their over-blown promises that if we will but put our product in their hands, they’ll find us a viable market.
Technically Speaking
How then do we tell the difference between revival, a good thing, and revivalism, a not so good thing? If technique is central to the folly of revivalism, and it is, how can I help us not to fall for the huckster’s hustle? I cannot give you “Three Easy Steps to Recognize The Folly of Three Easy Steps to Revival.” I cannot provide a technique to help you eschew technique.
Old Time Religion
So let me propose this technique- the eschewing of technique. Instead of man-made measures let’s confess our dependence on God made treasures- repentance and belief. I’m persuaded that genuine revival, wherein fishers of men find their nets full and the already caught mature and grow, only comes when the already caught are caught up in the glory of the gospel. When the redeemed enter more fully into their own sin they enter more fully into God’s grace. When they enter more fully into God’s grace, God’s grace comes more fully out of them. When the message is, “Be like me, successful and clean” we will ever drive the dirty away. When the message is, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner” the humble will be made clean.
Power and Glory
The Spirit will show up with great signs and astonishing wonders. The blind will see, the dead are made alive, and the lame will leap for joy. That, of course, is what happens at every revival, even a revival of one. The power and the glory is dunamis power, resurrection power, making dry bones live. When we embrace the sheer wonder of the redemption of souls, when we gasp at the chains of besetting sins being loosed, when we weep for the oil in Aaron’s beard, the unity of His body, the Spirit will come. When we get out of the way the harvest is plentiful and the feast is forever.
Does a fish know it’s wet? When one is born in water, goes to school in water, marries in water and raises little fish in water before dying in water, despite its ever presence, the water just isn’t noticed. So it is with each of us. We come into a world that is the only world we’ve ever known. How we know it, its meaning and its message, is shaped by it. And it’s so hard to miss.
Since the work of Abraham Kuyper, and more recently Francis Schaeffer, the evangelical church has grown conscious of the importance of developing a Christian worldview. That’s a good thing, one I’m in favor of. It’s one of the reasons I wrote Tearing Down Strongholds. The devil understands the strategic importance of our little gray cells, and so invades our brains, intent on helping us think his thoughts after him. We must be conscious of the war, prepare for the war, and fight the war. But we must also beware the sleeper cells in our gray cells.
Consider this truth. Where does the Bible command us to develop a sound Christian worldview? It doesn’t. It commands us to seek after wisdom. It demands we not be conformed to this world but that we renew our minds. It insists that we tear down strongholds. All of which have overlap with developing a sound Christian worldview. But “developing a sound Christian worldview” also has overlap with modernism. It, in comparison to the Biblical command to pursue wisdom, is decidedly abstract, impersonal, even amoral. Just like modernism. It implicitly affirms that we are machines, and that ideologies are programs embedded on our hard drives.
Wisdom, on the other hand, is presented in our Bibles as a beautiful woman who is to be pursued. Her value is greater than gold. She is the paragon of virtue, a guider of earnest souls. Foolishness, in contrast, isn’t merely erroneous conclusions but a seductress and a killer of the simple. She isn’t passive (mis)information but aggressive assaults.
When we think that what is wrong with the world is bad information rather than wicked hearts we demonstrate that we have already given room to the world in our minds, and in our hearts. When we think that what is wrong with the church is bad information rather than wicked hearts we prove the point once again. When we think that what ails us will be cured by more and better education, we have adopted the sacrament of the moderns. When we think the way to prepare our children for a good life is securing them credentials from the poshest educational institutions we have handed them over to the priests of the false religion of modernism. When we think the most powerful weapon to tear down the stronghold of postmodernism is a double dose of modernism we show ourselves to be all wet.
The real solution is the same as it ever was- to repent and believe the gospel. And to call on all others to do the same.
