What should I remember in the voting booth?

Posted on October 20, 2020 by RC

It’s a fool’s errand to try to understand why someone breaks up with you. The notion that we can pinpoint one flaw, excise it and then live happily ever after is well, false. When someone breaks up with you, no matter what they say, there’s only one reason- they don’t want to be with you. Voting is often similar. We usually instinctively, unthinkingly choose our candidate, and then start coming up with a rationale. The rationale is just window dressing. We like whom we like. Before we pull the levers, however, we would be wise to pursue wisdom. Below are five thoughts we should bring with us into the booth.

1. Jesus reigns. He has decided from before all time who will rule under Him in this nation and every nation. That, of course, doesn’t mean your vote doesn’t matter. He works through means. It does mean, however, that you can leave fear behind. The fate of the future is not in your hands, but in the hands that received the nails we all deserve.
2. Jesus is right beside you. You have the opportunity in that booth to demonstrate your trust in Him. What you do in that booth is far more about you and Him than it is about you and the next president. Of course this is true of every moral crossroads we find ourselves at throughout our lives.
3. Jesus loves you. It is important to vote wisely. It is important that we learn the Word of God and what it calls the state to do, and not to do. It is important that we put to use this opportunity to seek justice from our rulers. So yes, bring with you true and biblical wisdom. But don’t go in without the knowledge that our failures to act with wisdom are covered by the blood of Christ. Your vote may be right or wrong. Labor faithfully to see that it is right. But remember it isn’t the hinge of your eternity.
4. Jesus calls you to love Him. How often do we carry into the booth the expectations of our friends and family? We see them looking over our shoulder, either giving their approval or disapproval. We, however, don’t work for them. We work for Jesus. He is our Master, and it is His blessing we should be seeking. Do not let the expectations of others cloud this truth.
5. Jesus is coming back. And when He does He will judge the quick and the dead. The Bible tells us the martyrs cry out from under the heavenly altar, pleading with Jesus to vindicate them. How many of those martyrs are the spirits of the more than sixty million babies who have been sacrificed to Moloch right here in our own country?

After you have left the booth, keep these five truths with you. They are true at all times and in all places. And they are faithful guides for all our decisions. Rest in Him. Trust in Him. Hear Him. Love Him. And, whoever wins the election, cry with equal vigor, “Maranatha Lord Jesus.”

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Perennialism; Love Is; Sticky Pride

Posted on October 20, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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New Theses, New Reformation

Posted on October 19, 2020 by RC

Thesis 46 We must seek always to see Christ.

Neil Postman, in his compelling book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, argues that we have moved as a culture from one wherein the printed word drives us, to one wherein the image drives us. With the advent of the printing press, we became better able to think in abstract terms, to follow arguments, and to reach conclusions. Now, in a world driven by television, we think less and feel more. Now we emote on the basis of images, rather than think on the basis of arguments. We are more likely to be moved, than we are to be persuaded.

As is so often the case, however, what we are called to here is balance. We do not want to be carried away with our emotions, nor by what we see. Neither, on the other hand, do we want to suppress our emotions and live like robots. Our goal is that we would think rightly, that our minds would be renewed, and having had this happen, that we would be changed in our hearts, that we would be transformed.

That same balance is reflected in how the Word reaches us. Far too often in the history of the church theologians have pitted the sacraments against preaching, failing to see their organic connection. The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is the bread and the wine. The bread and the wine is the Word of God. To put it better perhaps, in the worship service we are blessed by the Word preached, as we are blessed by the Word touched, and tasted, at the table.

To push our analogy a step further, we must also remember that the church is the body of Christ, and the bread is the body of Christ. God has not given us just words on a page. He has given us the Word visible in the sacrament, and in the church. Our calling is to seek to see Him in both. We need to see Him in our brothers and sisters in the pew, and when we come to His table.

In both instances we are changed. In both instances we draw near to Him. In both instances we are changed, in our whole being. Jesus told us that the world would know we were His by our love one for another (John 13:35). Given that we are still sinners, how can we rightly love one another? Because we grow in our capacity to see Jesus in one another. He indwells each of us, and He is altogether lovely. We in ourselves are merely dust and rebellion. But Christ in us, that is glory and beauty and all that is lovely.

Our calling is to keep our eyes on the prize. Jesus not only secures our reward, but is our reward. As we look to Him, whether we find Him in the Bible, at the table, or in the pews, we move toward our eternal home. Jesus promised that lo, He is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). We ought then always to see Him with us.

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Lisa & I on intimacy barriers & Bi5m II Kings

Posted on October 19, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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The Lord of Darkness

Posted on October 17, 2020 by RC

I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 6b-7).

It was Millenium Bug season, and many of my friends thought I was sick. They feared for me that my manic concern about the potential for untold hardship at the turn of the new year, 2000, not only was evidence that I suffered from Chicken Little Disease, but that I was giving up my commitment to the Reformed faith. We Reformed folk, if we believe anything, believe in the sovereignty of God. How, these friends worried, could I have even the slightest concern about this grave hardship befalling us, when I supposedly believed in the sovereignty of God? I told them often, “It’s because I believe in the sovereignty of God.” My friends reasoned in this manner- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore bad things cannot happen. I reasoned this way- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore “bad” things can happen. The difference in our views was that each of us believed competing unspoken premises. They believed God could not will for bad things to happen. I believe He not only could so will, but likely one day would.

Isaiah the prophet is, if only parenthetically, making the same point. That is, his larger point, which is in point of fact on point, is that God is God. He is the almighty one. To suggest that anything would come to pass that He did not sovereignly orchestrate is an affront to His sublime deity. To get us to more fully grasp this hard truth Isaiah, speaking for God, speaks an even harder truth. That is to say, neither is content to merely affirm that God is sovereign over all things, but both go the extra mile to affirm, yes, that includes the bad stuff too.

The easier version of the problem of evil addresses not the question of how men became sinners, but instead addresses the question of the fruit of that sin- why do bad things happen? Those outside the kingdom are wont to ask why bad things happen to good people. Those inside the kingdom don’t have such a pressing question for we know there are no good people. But we still struggle with the whys of hurricanes, pandemics, and in the case of Isaiah, oppression by foreign powers. Indeed we are so perplexed by the reality of suffering that we find ourselves in a rather bizarre position- trying to get God off the hook. We deny implicitly that we deserve the suffering we experience (which is true enough- we deserve far worse than any suffering we ever experience on this side of the veil) because we feel the need to justify God, to put distance between Him and our suffering lest He be found guilty for treating us unfairly.

My friends, thankfully, didn’t want to go in that direction. They were not willing to negotiate God’s sovereignty. God is sovereign, they rightly affirmed. God is good, they rightly affirmed. God won’t let these United States become a wasteland they wrongly concluded. My friends’ real problem is that they confused these United States with the kingdom of God and they confused a pleasant and safe life with a good one. It is precisely because we were a wicked nation that worshipped affluence in 1999 that I feared for our safety. Though God spared us an earth-shaking calamity that time, does that mean He always will? Have we as a nation come to repentance? Have we owned our sin and turned from it?

That is not to say that I am now once again breaking out my “The End is Near” sandwich board. I don’t know now any more than I knew then what God was going to do in the near term future. I don’t know if our currency will go the way of the German mark, circa 1923. I don’t know if the ship of state will veer so far to the left that we’ll take on water and sink. I do know this however. If God sends a new and surprising kind of calamity upon us, it will be God who sends it. I know that His goodness and His sovereignty are not hedges against this. For we together stand guilty before Him. The very ground cries out because of the innocent blood.

More important, I know this. Isaiah’s prophecies end with the promise of the fullness of the kingdom. I know that because our God reigns, that if He sends calamity He sends it always for His glory, and for our good. Nothing truly “evil” could ever befall we who are His own. Hardship, yes. Cross bearing, by all means. Even death, of course. All of which are tools in His hand to make us more like Jesus. That, in the end, is not only not a calamity, but is the very height of glory. Fear not. He has already overcome the world.

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The Blessings of Beatings

Posted on October 16, 2020 by RC


No one, when they are in the midst of a beating, enjoys it. Such doesn’t undo the truth that beatings are blessings. They are among that list of gifts from our Father, all of which are good and perfect. What are they? Hardships, which can come via verbal rebuke, physical pain, humiliations, all of which, for the believer, trace back to the loving hand of our heavenly Father. Here are five reasons such are blessings.

1. They remind us that God is active in our lives, and bringing to pass His good will for us. The author of Hebrews writes, “If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons” (12: 7, 8). Our response should be one of gratitude. Our Father loves us.
2. They drive us to Him. Doctors say that pain is a kind of alarm system letting us know something isn’t right. True enough, but it’s also an alarm system calling us to prayer, and to Him. How easy it is to forget Him when all is well, to grow complacent and self-satisfied. Paul’s thorn in his flesh worked just in this way, which is precisely why God determined not to take it away despite the earnestness of Paul’s prayers.
3. They can soften us. It’s true that hardships can also make us hard. When we are in pain we might be given to short tempers, to being easily agitated. We might also, however, be given to deeper tenderness. We reach out to others because we don’t want to be alone. We seek comfort, and so speak comfort to others. They weary us such that our defenses come down and we embrace a vulnerability that cultivates connection.
4. They encourage a long-term view, and a longing for THE view. When we are in the midst of hardship it makes perfect sense that our minds and hearts would turn to what lies ahead, a place where there are no more hardships, no more tears. We are not only headed for paradise, but are headed for eternity there. This is why Paul writes, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (II Corinthians 4:17). There we will enjoy what God’s people call “the beatific vision.” We will see the very face of God. Anything that encourages us to contemplate that glory is a blessing.
5. They cultivate in us compassion for others. Or, to put it another way, they remake us into the image of Christ. He is a man well acquainted with sorrows and if we would be like Him, so must we be. We need to be able to say in all our hardships, “This hurts so much is must be good for me.”

The Bible, on more than one occasion, calls upon us to give thanks to God for our hardships. When our passion is not comfort but that we would be like Jesus, we do so naturally, easily, earnestly. Lord, teach us to count our beatings, count them one by one, and teach us to count them blessings.

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Posted on October 16, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Ask RC- What about head coverings? What does “because of the angels” mean?

Posted on October 15, 2020 by RC

I’m for them. Here are just a few thoughts on the matter. First, I am happy to concede that men of good will differ on this issue. That said, I’m delighted that one person who shared my perspective was my father. That, of course, doesn’t settle the issue. It does help my confidence that I’m not out in left field.

Second, I’m also happy to boldly suggest that virtually every Christian, from the time of Paul’s epistle to about half a century ago, agrees with me on this issue. That also doesn’t settle the issue, but it helps my confidence even more that I am not out in left field. What potent interpretive insight, I wonder, did the church miss all those centuries? Isn’t it just a bit curious that all believers believed the same thing on this issue until the rise of feminism?

Third, one thing I’m certain of- having our wives cover their heads at corporate worship is certainly not a sin. Looking down our noses at those who do not do so is a sin. Doing so is certainly not. Failing to do so, on the other hand may be a sin. By resistless Pascalian logic, the choice should be obvious. That is, if choice A is certainly not a sin and choice B possibly could be a sin, isn’t it clearly safer and better to choose A?

Fourth, I’m highly skeptical of the “Her hair is the covering” argument. It strikes me that if that were the case, Paul wouldn’t have had to say anything. As messed up as the Corinthian church was, I don’t suspect there was a strong husbands-with-bald-headed-wives contingent there needing to be rebuked. Such is not to say I understand precisely where the long hair fits in on all this.

Fifth, please notice the grammar above. This is an issue for husbands, not wives. That is, no man will be able to stand before the throne of God, and when He asks why his wife worshipped uncovered, say, “Yeah, what about that? Why don’t we get her in here?” Wives, that means that if your husband doesn’t want you to cover, covering is a sin. We are to obey those in authority over us unless or until they command us to do what God clearly forbids or forbid us to do what God clearly commands. I don’t believe this is an issue that rises to the level of “clearly.” It would, I suspect, give the devil quite a laugh if a woman covers her head as a sign of submission to a husband who asked her not to.

Sixth, I really don’t like to make a big deal about this. When I am asked in person about this issue, I typically reply, “I’ll probably commit a more grave sin in the time it takes me to answer the question than it is to be wrong on this issue.” It would never cross my mind to think less of any family with a wife’s head uncovered.

So why did I bother to answer it? So I could get to the second part of the question. Here I have what may be the wisest answer I could ever give. What is meant by “because of the angels?” I don’t know.

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God is Creative; Appeal; Covid and Festivals

Posted on October 15, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Living Dead Documents

Posted on October 14, 2020 by RC

It is a dangerous thing when the church determines to follow the world. We’re used to folks bemoaning that propensity, talking about our problem of worldliness. Chuck Swindoll once said “If you take a white glove and drop it in the mud, the mud doesn’t get all glovey.” In the same way, when we follow the world, we aren’t helping the world, we’re actually becoming worldly and dangerous.

But there’s an alternate perspective. There is an iron law of reality, that because we are salt and light, because we are the center of the story, at the end of the day, the world ends up following us. I’m particularly mindful of this during election season. Whoever is elected in November, the following January they’re going to put their hand on some book of some faith, and they’re going to hold up their right hand and make a solemn vow to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. And whatever act they do as their first act as president after that is likely going to violate the Constitution of the United States. We like to believe in a romantic kind of way that the highest law in our land is the Constitution. But it is a dead letter. No one follows it; no one cares about it. It is not even a wax nose being twisted and shaped into something unrecognizable. It’s just done.

How did that happen? The short answer to that is that we’ve developed a view of jurisprudence that looked at the Constitution and decided that it was a living document. That we should not be bound by the thoughts of the original author, writing for the original audience, but rather, we can have some wiggle room by looking at it in light of our day and our perspective, and justify it by calling it a living document. If we look a little deeper, we see that the propensity to call the Constitution a living document was actually born out of an earlier commitment by the Church to treat the Bible the same way.

We have lost any sense of constitutionalism in our country precisely because in the Church we have lost the idea that the Bible is a binding document on us, and that the only way to understand what it says is to seek out and understand what the original author sought to communicate to the original audience. We have a whole army of people who call themselves evangelicals, but who also call themselves egalitarian. To profess to be an evangelical, I would think, would in some part be an affirmation of the authority of Scripture, if not its inerrancy and infallibility. And yet we look at the Bible and see Paul saying things like “Women are not to exercise authority or to teach in the church”, or “Wives are to submit to their own husbands as unto the Lord” and they will bristle under this and will turn around, having affirmed their belief in the authority of Scripture and say “Well, that’s Paul. Paul is culturally conditioned. We are culturally conditioned. And so what we’re going to do is erase this, ignore this, and look at this as something that’s not binding on us anymore.”

In praise of liberal Christianity, which J Gresham Machen would argue is no Christianity at all, they at least have the courage to say “Paul in the Bible is wrong here. We don’t agree with Paul; we think the Bible errs here.” But the egalitarian evangelicals are trying to have their cake and eat it too. “We don’t want to be bound by what Paul said and what Paul meant, so we’re going to turn the Bible into a living document. We’re going to take those parts that go against the zeitgeist, against the spirit of the age, and we’re going to call them culturally bound statements that we’re not obligated to submit to. We’re going to rewrite our own perspective on the relationship between men and women, or even homosexual behavior.”

We’re people who are adrift. We’re adrift because we’ve cut off our moorings ourselves. We don’t want to be bound by a Constitution politically. We don’t want to be bound by the Bible in our churches. And what we end up with in both instances is the tyranny of the powerful. When we submit ourselves to God’s Word, what we find is liberty. When we cut ourselves off from God’s Word, we find tyranny, whether in the Church or in the world. I want in one sense, the Bible to be dead. Not without life, not without the power to change, but in the sense that it doesn’t change. The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

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