It’s a good thing to have nice things. I’m all in favor of it, for me and for everyone else. You won’t find me confusing poverty for piety. That said, it was a wise poet who first wrote, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.” The same is true not just of the money that can buy nice things but the nice things that money already bought. Our earthly goods are surely good, but they are decidedly not safe. Even if we manage to hold on to all our good stuff until the day we die, they will maintain their nature as earthly goods. We can’t take them with us.
What if, however, we had something infinitely more valuable than nice things? What if that thing was both earthly and heavenly? And what if it was utterly and absolutely secure? It is a good thing for us to consider the reality of the forgiveness of our sins, to contemplate the great price paid. It is a good thing to rejoice over the deliverance He gives to us. It is a wonder beyond imagining that He has adopted us as His children. What, however, should stop us dead in our tracks is that all these blessings are as immutable as God Himself. They can never be taken away from us, thrown away by us, diminished through our failures nor increased through our successes. His love for me isn’t grounded in what I’ve done for Him but in what He’s done for me.
Every bit of worry and fear that I go through stems from one of two great errors. Either I am fearful that some harm will come to my idols, wood, hay and stubble or I am fearful that something will rob, steal or tarnish the Pearl of Great Price. How bold might I become, how rich a harvest of peace might the Spirit bring forth from me if I knew, unshakably, the unshakable truth that He loves me by name, infinitely and immutably? How might I better love my enemies, my neighbor, my wife and family if I never worried whether my own emotional needs were met in Him? How much more brightly might the glory of His reign shine if I built my own house on the rock of His love for me?
It’s a good thing to give careful study to sound doctrine. We need it and are in danger without it. We ought always be busy about the business of looking more deeply into those things that angels long to look into. We would, however, be wiser to know that more important than knowing more is believing more. My failures do not flow out of insufficient information but insufficient appreciation for the information I already know.
Do you agree? Are you striving for more information for you or for more formation in you? Are you praying “Lord, explain it to me again” or “Lord I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.” Are you rejoicing in your intellectual attainment or in the simple truth that He has you in His scarred hands and will never let you go? Let us repent and believe.
It has long been my habit whenever I speak somewhere, to remind those to whom I am speaking of our historical context. Context is everything. My goal isn’t to place us in the declining years of the west — though that is where we are. Nor is it important to me to note that we have entered the third millennium. Rather, I want people to understand that the context of our lives is the same as the context for everyone’s life, from the first advent of the first Adam to the second advent of the second Adam. All of our lives take place in the context of the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. God declares in Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed. You will bruise His heel, and He will crush your head.” The God who creates the world in Genesis 1 and 2, who divided day and night, sky, land and sea, in turn divides the world in Genesis 3. There is no neutral ground. History, not church history, but history, is the story of the work of Christ in crushing the serpent, and bringing all His enemies into subjection.
This one war that is the context of our lives, isn’t, however, the only war in our lives. We fight a lifelong battle as Christians, the battle against our old nature, that dead, old man that just keeps fighting to the death. Sanctification is the process by which we, by and through the power and grace of God, win that battle. Over time, as we grow in grace, our fallen nature begins to fall away, and we become more and more what we were in the garden. As we grow in grace, we better and better reflect the image of our Savior, who is the express image of the Father.
But there is a third war as well, besides the war between us and them, and the war between us and us. It is the war between them and them. That is, just as our old and new natures vie for survival in us, so too in those outside the kingdom there is a battle between the image of God and their fallen nature. But history is moving as inexorably here as it is in our own lives. Just as we become more and more what we were created to be, so those outside the redeeming grace of God become less and less what they were created to be. To put it another way, there are not only three wars going on, but three great siftings. First, the sheep and goats are separated. Second, that which is goat-like is separated from the sheep. And third, that which is sheep-like is separated from the goats. In eternity that which is white will be all white, that which is black will be all black. Grey will simply fade away.
The culture wars are fought in this context. As the culture seeks to live in greater and greater rebellion, we who are citizens of heaven grow more slowly. And as we become salt and light, they, servants of the serpent, decay more slowly. All sinners, those inside and outside the kingdom, want convenience. But all sinners in turn tend to love their own children, a reflection of the One whose image we all bear. A culture is in decline, however, when the love of convenience trumps the love of children, as it has in these United States now for more nearly 50 years. Sixty million image bearers never became warriors in the great battle precisely because the image of God is eclipsed, not principally in how we see them, but in what we are in ourselves. That is, it is the destruction of the image of God in mothers that has led to the denial of the image of God in babies, and through that brought their wanton destruction.
That the evangelical church has barely uttered the least objection is condemning proof that we are not only not fighting well the culture war, but are not fighting well the war within ourselves. Our indifference is a shameful portent of the remaining power of sin in our lives.
It is because our enemies in this great battle yet bear the image of our God that we can and must love them. We love them, however, not by laying down our arms, but by taking them up. We love them not by trying to become like them, but by being the ekklesia, the called-out ones, set apart, separate, holy. We love them by being salt and light. When we seek to protect the unborn because they bear God’s image, we are in turn seeking to protect the already born, because they bear His image.
Though the war is all too real, the weapons with which we fight are not carnal. No gunship will vanquish the serpent. No smart bomb will annihilate the old nature within us. No howitzer will strengthen the image of God in the lost. Rather, the battle cry, indeed the great weapon in all three battles is one, this confession — Jesus Christ is Lord. The more we believe it, the more we will be Him. The more we will be Him, the more they will see Him. And the more they see Him, the more the world will change.
It’s not peculiarly new, this objection to the Christian faith. People have used it for some time when confronted with the plain teaching of the Bible. Those outside the church seek to wiggle out from under the commands of God by, oddly, pointing to the commands of God. When we say “The Bible forbids x” they don’t reply, “It does not.” Instead they reply, “The Bible also says you can’t wear a shirt with both cotton and wool. The Bible also says you can sell your daughter. The Bible also says you can stone your son if he gets out of line.” And too many Christians slink away.
The argument assumes the existence of a universal moral law that all humans recognize, but then suggests that the Bible itself not only falls short of that moral law but clearly and immediately opposes that universal moral law. The argument suggests, “Given that the Bible’s sense of morality says this, why should we listen to what it has to say about that?”
What though, ought we to do with laws that challenge our sensibilities? The first thing we need to do is to understand the nature, meaning and scope of the laws. Consider, for instance, God’s command to Old Testament Israel that they not wear clothing of mixed materials. This law falls under what we call the ceremonial laws. These laws were not given because eternal moral standards require them. They were given instead for a more narrow, specific purpose- to set Israel apart from her neighbors. The same would apply to prohibitions against eating pork or shellfish. These laws were given for a people, for a time. They were not evil laws then, but they are not binding laws now. Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law, which means we now can eat a BLT, and better still, don’t have to be circumcised.
Some of the “offending” laws, however, were not ceremonial as such, but were civil. The Old Testament civil law, for instance, allowed for recalcitrant, disobedient children to be stoned to death. This did not mean, of course, that failure to pick up one’s toys was a capital offense. The law instead dealt with older, teenaged children who defied, who dishonored, who maligned their parents continually. Still find it offensive?
Then you need to repent. The God of heaven and earth determined that the nation of Israel, that He formed, that He governed, should have such a law. No doubt recalcitrant children didn’t like it. No doubt their heathen neighbors didn’t like it. But we who are supposed to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit are commanded to disciple the nations, commanding them to obey all that Jesus commanded. And Jesus, remember, came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.
The heathen find this retort effective not because God’s law is shameful, but because we are shamefully ashamed of it. We are already compromised, having our sense of justice informed by the world, rather than the Word. Our calling is not to squirm, not to apologize, not to try to cover for God. No, our calling is to stand on His Word, to have our consciences held captive to it, to adjust our moral sensibilities so they match God’s, rather than the world’s. Our calling is to be ashamed of ourselves, rather than the One who rescued us from our sins.
Cheaters gonna cheat. It’s what we do. Over the past few years gambling has grown to be virtually synonymous with the game. The Oakland Raiders now call Las Vegas home. The NFL has its own official gambling app. Time was that any connection to gambling was strictly forbidden in professional sports. The great Willie Mays, years after he retired, found himself in hot water with Major League Baseball when he took a job as a greeter at a casino. He’d done nothing wrong. It just “looked bad” in those more innocent times. The Houston Astros took the joy of winning the World Series and dropped it in the trash. Not long ago the NBA had to come clean and admit that one of its officials was manipulating games for gamblers. Fake vaccine cards, performance enhancing drugs, deflated footballs and stolen signals. It’s everywhere.
The problem here isn’t, in the end, gambling. The problem isn’t that sports have somehow become entirely too competitive. The problem isn’t endemic only to professional sports. Once more, instead, we find professional sports to be a microcosm of the broader world. It was philosophers, not football players, who first suggested that right and wrong are culturally conditioned. It was artists, not football players, who first “challenged our paradigms” by mocking honor. It was professors, not football players, who first taught us that all texts are shrouded power grabs, and so have no power to compel.
We have created a culture where we cannot be condemned for our sexual shenanigans, and then are shocked that we are surrounded by competitive shenanigans. As my friend and for Major League baseball player Mark Dewey once wrote in Every Thought Captive, we know that Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds were unfaithful to their marital vows. Why should we expect them to be faithful to their competitive vows? Which, in the end, is the more sacred vow?
Relativism in the end isn’t merely stupid. It isn’t merely permissive. It is instead the death of everything good, true and beautiful. Because we are sinners we construct a world where sin is not possible. Because we are human, we hate the world we have created. Or, to quote a most quotable man, “And all the time—such is the tragic-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible…In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful” (The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis.)
They will scream at us that we are narrow, bigoted, and judgmental. And all the while they will long, as long as we are not like them, for the goodness, truth and beauty that inhabits the walls of the city of God. They will praise our works before God.
Dunamis Fellowship and Sovereign Grace Fellowship continue tonight our weekly Bible study at 7 eastern. Tonight we begin, Meeting Jesus. All are welcome to attend at our home. You can even come early (6:15) and we’ll feed you a meal. You can also watch on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you join us as we consider together who Jesus is.
