God’s Good Pleasure

Posted on December 21, 2020 by RC

Ask RC: Does God take pleasure in the death of the wicked?

Yes, and no. First, to the no. The Bible explicitly says exactly this,

Say to them, As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11).

Shouldn’t that settle the matter? While this text is of course true, this text is likewise true,

Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. (Psalm 135:6).

Which is why the answer is also yes. It is not either/or but both/and. It is not a contradiction, but a paradox. The truth is that God does take pleasure in the death of the wicked in one sense, and doesn’t in another sense. The pleasure He takes is grounded in the execution of His justice, the manifestation of His holiness. Does He take pleasure in that? He certainly does. He even tells us that He raised up Pharaoh for that very purchase, that He might manifest His glory in taking him down.

The pleasure He takes, however, isn’t in the death. What God is denying in Ezekiel is that He is a sadist, that He takes a perverse kind of pleasure in seeing people suffer. In context God is, speaking through Ezekiel, telling His covenant people who have already received judgment from God to not embrace discouragement, but to turn and repent. The people of God are beaten down, ashamed, and likely feeling hopeless. They have earned God’s disfavor and His judgment. The message then is a call to return to the loving arms of their Father, whose pleasure and delight is to forgive the repentant.

If we take an absolutist position that God in no way, shape or form finds pleasure in the death of the wicked we run into two significant roadblocks. First, the Bible makes it clear, not just in Psalm 135 but from beginning to end, that God is sovereign, that He does as He pleases, that no one and no thing can thwart His determined will. Second, the Bible makes it clear, from beginning to end, that God imposes judgment on all the wicked who are outside of Jesus. That is, to take an absolutist position on this text is to embrace full universalism, which flies in the face of the Bible.

Consider for a moment if you were a judge sentencing a murderer. You would be a perverse person indeed if you rubbed your hands together like a mad scientist while cackling before sending him to the electric chair. You would be solemn, grave. It would be a dark day for you. But, at the same time, you would rejoice in the opportunity to do your job, to bring justice to pass. How much more so for our heavenly Father who is altogether just, altogether holy, altogether merciful?

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Sacred Marriage Under Fire iv; Proverbs

Posted on December 21, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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The Crowded Public Square

Posted on December 19, 2020 by RC

The story is told, and is probably true, that our most sacred holidays are placed on the calendar where they are not for historical accuracy, but for political expediency. December 25th was a pagan holiday, near the winter solstice. So was Easter. When Constantine had his supposed conversion, and dragged the remains of the Roman empire with him, it only seemed wise not to cancel the biggest parties of the year. It was decided to co-opt them instead. The holiday is dead. Long live the holiday.

Turnabout is fair play. The pagan Roman festivals, while making a minor comeback, are not on the forefront of anyone’s social calendar these days. But seeing a block full of events between the fourth Thursday in November, and the beginning of the New Year, many have decided to crash our parties. The advent season, that time when we pause to remember the need for and grace of the incarnation of our Lord is indeed a time to celebrate. And nobody likes to feel left out. Worse still, nobody likes to leave anybody out. We have invited the world to our party, and told them they don’t need Jesus to get in.

Crammed into that little window of time we now call the “holiday season” we have not only our own celebrations, but Hanakuh, Kwaanza and the vague holiday season of the poor, secular, “meta-narrative challenged.” First we shared Saint Nicholas with them, transforming a dedicated, pious monk into an overweight jolly old elf. Now we share the whole season with them. There then, on the lawn in front of town hall, we have, if we’re lucky, a manger scene, and right beside it, a menorah, some sort of Kwaanza thing, whatever that might be, and a bevy of North Pole citizens in mid-frolic. The malls, lest they anger their own seasonal god, money, by offending any potential customers, celebrate in much the same way. It is not the use of the Greek X, as in X-mas, nor crass commercialism that is killing Christmas (though it of course doesn’t help any) as much as it is multi-culturalism. If no one’s reason to celebrate is better than anyone else’s, then there can be no real reason to celebrate.

Holidays are merely the melding together of remembrance liturgies and celebrations. The thing we are remembering is the thing we are celebrating. We are rejoicing because Christ came and dwelt among us. In the world, they are merely celebrating that they are celebrating. It’s as hollow as a federal reserve note.

We should not expect the world to celebrate with us. For those outside Christ, the coming of Christ, both the first time and the last, is a day of darkness, not light. That He came to take our judgment does not change the truth that He always comes in judgment. But they can’t stand to see us having a good time. As they always do, they take away the offense of the cross and then join us in our reverie. But there is nothing to celebrate without the cross. Without the cross they are uninvited guests who should be shown the door. We do not celebrate each year the birthday of a great moral teacher. We do not celebrate the birth of our example. We celebrate that God the Son took on flesh, and dwelt with us. There is no way to make that message palatable to Jews, or Muslims, nor those affirming that we emerged from the sludge by accident.

That they are celebrating, however, does not mean that we should not. That they are whistling in the dark doesn’t mean that we can’t walk on the sunshine. It is our day, our celebration. When someone crashes your party you don’t decide to never have another party. You just celebrate it more carefully. Let them have their empty gestures, the interest on the capital they borrowed. Don’t mimic them, by celebrating the holiday season, by joining in an amorphous time of good will. Do not practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. Without the birth of the Savior, they have neither kindness nor beauty, and are deliberate denials of the grace of God.

The answer is not slowing down the spending, (though that might be wise), nor boycotting any store caught with Christmas decorations before some arbitrary date. The answer is to drown out the cacophony of the phonies, to use this season as a time to remember. Remember your sins, which created enmity with God. And then remember that while we were yet sinners, Christ was born of a virgin for us, leaving behind His glory. While we were yet sinners, Christ lived a perfect life for us in absolute subjection to the law of His Father. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet sinners Christ arose and ascended to His throne for us, to intercede for us, to exercise dominion for and through us, and that Emmanuel, God with us, will come again. That is worth celebrating, no matter what the heathen are doing.

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The Way in the Manger

Posted on December 18, 2020 by RC

It is increasingly fashionable, and has always been quite easy to debunk a number of Christmas season staples that are either less than certain or certainly not true. We don’t know, for instance, how many wise men there were, because the Bible doesn’t tell us. Three gifts are mentioned, but not three men. We don’t even know that they arrived the night He was born. We do know that our typical image of the stable is way off. At that time the “stable” was the first floor of the home, where animals were brought at night, not a wooden structure away from the house.

These kinds of mistakes happen in part because our cultural baggage gets lost in transition. If we wanted a place to keep our animals we’d make it out of wood, and put it some distance from the people. So we assume they would do the same. Even the image of Joseph and the young Jesus as a carpenter is likely off quite a bit. And for much the same reason. Wood was relatively scarce in first century Palestine. Whenever possible homes, tools, even furniture were constructed of something far longer lasting, stone. It is likely that stone was the material Joseph worked with.

It is likely as well, for the same reasons, that the manger Jesus was placed in was not a wooden kind of basket but was instead stone, either carved into the wall of the first floor of the home, or free standing. Part of the subtext of the birth in the stable narrative is that it is consistent with the compelling notion that God humbled Himself in the birth of Jesus. And so it is, even if the “stable” is a bit more like an unfinished basement. But could there be more here?

Whether dug into the wall or standing alone, the stone mangers of that period look remarkably like the tombs of the same period. If you took a tomb, in fact, and shrunk it down to the size of a baby it would look exactly like a manger. Could it be that the original audience, when they read that the newborn child was laid in a manger would have naturally thought, “Yes, He was born to die. The end is foreshadowed in the beginning here.” And if so, should not we think the same?

Could there be yet another reason He was placed in the manger? Another message in the text? We’ve invested so much time and energy remembering He was born in a manger that we have virtually forgotten what a manger is for. A manger is the place where food was placed. The sheep know the manger is where they go to be fed. There they find the bread of life. We, His sheep, continue to do the same.

The stable story does a wonderful job of reminding us of His humility. The true story gives the same message, but also reminds us He came to die, and did so that we might live.

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7 Churches, Lisa & I on Virgin River ii, Hardness of Hardship

Posted on December 18, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Ask RC- Why do you write?

Posted on December 17, 2020 by RC

To make manifest the kingdom of God. My goal is change, to change me, those who read my pieces, and the world. My desire is that I, and those who read my pieces would become more like Jesus. And that the pieces themselves would show us who He is.

Writing changes me, as it is at my keyboard that I do my best thinking about what matters most to me. Pieces are usually birthed while I am doing something else, taking a walk, washing dishes. But those nascent thoughts mature, become seasoned at moments just like this. Writing both listens to and speaks from that part of me that is most obscured to others and myself. I become both teacher and student.

My hope too is that the pieces I write change others. Though I know we don’t often embrace change, I know in turn that we need it. If one of my pieces leaves you where it found you, I’ve wasted your time and mine. That change sometimes involves shifting views on an issue. I want people to come to understand that we have peace with God by trusting in the finished atoning work of Christ on our behalf. I want people to grasp that God made governments to punish evil-doers, not to do evil. I want people to grasp the horror of abortion. I want people to understand that we yet struggle against sin, and that we still, as we did before we were reborn, don’t like facing our sin.

This particular goal sometimes elicits the most angry responses. It also, however, elicits some of the most encouraging. “Ouch” people say. “Reading you is like taking a 2×4 to the forehead” others insist. And I smile. You see that’s how I feel when I read writers I love. I don’t ever want to smack people upside the head for the fun of it. I do want to never shy away from doing so for the change it can engender. Is it possible that in reading, pain is weakness leaving the mind?

Change, however, is not limited to moving from denying X to affirming X. Too often we struggle with what I gently refer to as “intellectual constipation. “ We, especially we Reformed, make the mistake of thinking that thinking something is the same as believing something. We rightly aspire to have our head screwed on right, but wrongly assume that this, by itself, will take care of our hearts. What we know too often gets stuck in our heads, but doesn’t make it down to our beings. My hope is that through a right mixture of careful reasoning and unexpected beauty we might better believe what we affirm, that our convictions will not only reach our hearts, but come out our hands.

It is my heart’s desire as well that that marriage of careful reasoning and unexpected beauty would manifest the glory of God. I want to write in such a way that truth becomes not just the glorious reality that two hydrogens and an oxygen make water, but that snowflakes are liquid manna, a prodigal display of the play, and the pleroma of God. Though my gift is rather short of Olympic, I share the conviction of Eric Liddell. God made me for a purpose. But He also made me a writer. And when I write, I feel His pleasure. That’s why I write.

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Peace in the Valley of Chores; Catechism 53

Posted on December 17, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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The Other Cheek, and the Other Foot

Posted on December 16, 2020 by RC

We are all quick to take offense, and all rather blind to the offenses we cause. That’s because we think we are the center of the universe, and all others orbit around us. Consider Roy Costner IV, a young hero in South Carolina, the valedictorian of Liberty High, who, several years ago, when giving his speech at graduation, tore up his school-approved speech and proceeded to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I joined the thousands of others who commended the young man for his courage. Good on him for being willing to face an angry world who doesn’t want to hear about the true and living God. There is much to be commended in the young man’s earnest heart.

We Christians are, I suspect, all tired of getting kicked around by our increasingly militant secular culture. A baker in Colorado has, multiple times, faced the wrath of the state for his refusal to make a cake for two homosexual men who wanted to celebrate what they mistakenly call their marriage. As even the mainstream media now admits, conservatives have been targeted by the IRS. With each passing day the targets on our backs grow.

The Apostle Paul, as we know, was not averse to claiming his legal rights when the state abused him. He refused to be released quietly after a wrongful arrest and later insisted on a full trial, as was his right as a Roman citizen. He knew the law better than the state’s lawyers. We ought not to be ashamed to do the same, to insist on our God-given rights. What we ought not to do, however, is trample on the rights of others in the name of Jesus. Which is, however unintentionally, what this young man did.

To help us grasp this admittedly counter-intuitive truth, all we need do is imagine the shoe on the other foot. Suppose that the valedictorian of Liberty High had been a Muslim. Suppose he had had his speech approved by the authorities, went forward, tore that speech up, and recited a Muslim prayer. Suppose he simply chanted over and over for his allotted time, “Allah Akbar.” How would we feel then? I suspect some of you, already unhappy with me, are thinking now, “Had that happened the mainstream press would not have said a word.” You may be right. But I’m not writing for the mainstream media, but for Christians. The question is not what would they have done, but what would we have done? I suspect we would have been upset, and rightly so.

The problem in both instances is that the public schools are financed by taxes, money taken against the will of those from whom it is taken. We don’t like, indeed we find it morally reprehensible for the state to take our money and use it in any way that gives the impression of endorsing Islam. As we should. It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” That our opinions are true, that is, that the Christian faith is true and Islam (or the militant secularism of the state’s schools) false does not change the principle. Indeed it makes our sins that much the worse. We of all people should know better. We are indwelt by the Spirit of the living God. We have a true Word that calls us to turn the other cheek and to do unto others. Yet we applaud doing to the Muslim what we would protest the Muslim doing to us. We are called to a boldness that will proclaim the Lordship of Christ over all things. We are called to a humility that would insist that we must treat others as we would like to be treated. And we are called not to celebrate when we fail, but to repent.

Posted in apologetics, Biblical Doctrines, church, Education, ethics, evangelism, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, prayer, RC Sproul JR | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Self Helpism; Power of Positive Thinking

Posted on December 16, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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New Theses, New Reformation

Posted on December 15, 2020 by RC

Thesis 52 We must believe God loves us.

Love is one of the good words. Just as no one particularly labors to have words like death, or cruelty associated with themselves or their ideas, so everyone wants to lay claim to love. The devil is quite content for all of us to love love, as long as he maintains the power to define the term. The mainline American church follows mainstream American culture and defines love principally in permissive terms. Love means never requiring others to say they are sorry. God’s love for us, in this scheme, makes our sins insignificant (as well as the atonement of Christ.) God winks us into heaven, because we’re so valuable and lovable, and He’s such a swell guy (or girl).

The devil’s goal in promoting this nonsense, is not, in the end, directed at either liberal professing Christians nor those who are not professing Christians. Instead, his enemy is always those who trust in Christ alone. In getting them to embrace this foolish idea of love, he tempts us to deny or at least diminish the sound idea of God’s love. Evangelicals, at least the fundamentalist and the Reformed wings, want to affirm the reality of God’s wrath. He is a just and holy God. His wrath, justice and holiness are more real than we will ever realize. But they ought never to be contrasted with His love. We should not diminish any attribute of God to emphasize any others. The Lord our God is one. The Bible tells us time and again that we are loved by God. Our duty is to believe Him.

This is, in the end, the very end of the work of Christ. God’s goal was not merely that we would end up forgiven for our sins. This was but a step in a longer process whereby we who are by nature children of wrath become His own children. Our justification is in the service of our adoption. Jesus, His beloved Son, suffered for our sins so that we might become by grace His beloved sons.

I spent over a decade of my public ministry seeking to make known this startling reality- that if we are in Christ, we are loved by our heavenly Father as much now as we will ever be. Even when we remember our evangelical theology, even when we sing with our lips that we are justified by faith alone, too many of us too often seem to think that God is angry with us when we sin, and that we keep His anger far from us by not sinning. We long for heaven in part because we know that there we will sin no more. Guilt will no longer stand between us and our Father. The truth is, however, that guilt does not stand between us. Our guilt was driven away as far as the east is from the west two thousand years ago. God’s anger at our sins was spent on Calvary.

Over the past few years I have repented of seeking preaching this message. I no longer believe that I ought to be seeking to persuade people that God loves them now as much as He ever will love them. My goal now is to persuade Christians of this truth, far more shocking still- if you are in Christ, God loves you now as much as He loves His own Son. This is the good news. Not only were our sins forever expunged at Calvary, but the very obedience of Jesus became ours. He is as pleased with us as He is with His first born Son. We are now joint heirs with Him. We are in union with Him.

Believing this precious truth changes everything. So much of our fear, our weakness is driven by a failure to rest in this truth. We long for the approval of men, because we do not believe we have the approval of God. And so we fail to be faithful. Faith, however, is believing God. He has told us that He loves us. He has told us that He has made us His Sons. By his grace may He bless us with hearts that believe Him.

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