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.
Far more fragile than the human immune system is the human liberty system. That is, of all the frightening things that have come our way through the pandemic years, none frightens me more than to witness great swaths not just of the government but of the citizenry embracing the idea that the government ought to be free to tell us all what to do. The first day I ever heard of COVID I was stunned to hear the President announce on national television that he would forbid travel to and from certain countries. More recently I’ve heard a different President go on national television to a. announce which employees of which sized companies must receive an experimental injection and b. that he was losing his patience with trying to persuade people to get the jab and was looking into more persuasive means. I’ve seen the idea floated as serious public policy proposals that the unvaccinated at best be treated by army field hospitals, at worst that they be not treated at all. One need not buy into any conspiracy theory at all to recognize that we’re not in the land of the free anymore.
It was Ben Franklin who quipped, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We’re prone to think that our ideological commitments are safe when confronted with mild dangers, endangered when faced with extreme challenges. I suspect the opposite is the case. Were the Chinese communists to invade this land I have little doubt that we’d find a nation of heroes here. When a virus invades, on the other hand, we sell out at the first opportunity.
The same is true with respect to our faith. Part of the craftiness of the devil is his astonishing capacity to make us miss what is at stake. Put a gun to the average evangelical’s head and offer this choice, “Renounce Christ or die” and I suspect the vast majority would die. If, on the other hand, we are given this choice, “Embrace the spirit of the age or be embarrassed in front of your neighbors” we more often than not choose poorly.
Our calling is to strengthen the things that remain. We need to cultivate an immunity to social embarrassment. We need to move into the home of the brave if we wish to live in the land of the free. We don’t sell our liberty for security for two reasons. First because liberty is far too precious to be bought with the copper coins and dross of security. Second because those selling security are always out of stock.
I’m once again not taking a stand on vaccines, masks or social distancing. Everyone is free, so far, to do as they wish on those matters. The cultural push, and the cultural putsch that drives it, however, is toward tyranny. Trust not in princes. Find peace in the reign of the Prince of Peace.
One would need to be a Scrooge indeed to begrudge those who deny Jesus the happiness they enjoy on the occasion of the celebration of His birth. Jesus is for those who rest in Him, but He has indeed blessed the whole world. That said, there comes a time in everyone’s life for the airing of grievances and I have a whopper of a grievance with the world. It is simply this- what business do you, who believe you came from the primordial ooze by accident, who believe you will go to the dust and no longer even exist, who believe the entirety of the universe is just a thing with no meaning, have celebrating anything?
If all there is in the universe is matter and energy there is no reason whatsoever to value one day over another, one person over another, one choice over another. There is no room for making decisions of any kind because we seek always to choose the better. If there is no good there can be no better. Our choices are both random and meaningless. This holiday season I’ve seen your sentimental bromides about hope and kindness. Trouble is, you have no hope of any kind. You have no reason to suggest that hope is better than despair, nor kindness better than cruelty.
The story is told of the scientist who boasted to God that he was His equal, and could also create a man. God accepted the challenge and the scientist began scooping together bits of ground until God said, “Whoa, wait a minute. Get your own dirt.” In like manner you cannot dunk on Christian holidays grounded in God’s goodness and then build your own out of… what? It even fails inside out. That is, if central to “Festivus,” that holiday the writers of Seinfeld created for the hip heathen, is the “airing of grievances” I’m left to ask “On what basis could anyone ever have a grievance?” If I stole your marble rye, or lost your immigration papers or laughter while you were being mugged you have no ground to complain if there is no transcendent moral standard. Karma is perpetually lost when there is no roadmap.
I get the distaste unbelievers have toward believers. Their grievances against us have no standing from where they are coming from, but often do from where we’re standing. That is, we fall short of God’s standard, which standard they deny exists. To reject Him because we fail to measure up is to reject the very concept of measurement and therefore of failure.
My goal, however, is not to simply scold unbelievers for their unauthorized borrowing of our blessings but to invite them to actually own them. He gives freely to all who seek Him. Knock and the door will be opened. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You will have something to celebrate and Someone to thank. Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners, of which I am chief. By His perfect life, atoning death and vindicating resurrection I am redeemed and loved. Come and join the family.
There are, in our day, two principle competing views on how to answer this question. Because we live in a world where those committing sexual perversion have become a protected class, certain circles of the church have rushed to accommodate them. The up and coming theory, however anti-intuitive it might be is this- God destroyed Sodom not because it was a city given over to perversion, but because it was a city that failed to exercise hospitality. God’s wrath was poured out not because the men of Sodom, pounding on Lot’s door, wanted to sexually assault the angels, but because the angels were not treated with grace and compassion. It wasn’t what they wanted to take, but what they failed to give.
The more conservative wing of the church, of course, takes an older view, a more intuitive view. The narrative here goes like this- Sodom was a city where sexual perversion had taken such deep root, that when angels came to visit they were viewed as fresh meat. This grave evil that gave birth to this grave crime inspired God’s grave wrath.
While the second view, the more intuitive, the more historical view has more to go for it than the politically correct more modern view, I’m afraid they both seriously miss the point. Yes, the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness. Yes, sexual perversity is both a result of God’s wrath and a provocation of God’s wrath. But a more careful look at the story tells us why Sodom was destroyed. It was destroyed not because of the evil of the unbelievers. It was destroyed because of a lack of a remnant. God destroyed Sodom because of the failure of the church, of the believers.
Remember Abraham’s careful conversation with God, his virtual negotiation for the city of Sodom. Would God spare the city if there were fifty righteous there? Forty-five? Forty? Finally God agrees that He will spare the city for ten. But Abraham could not find even ten. Don’t miss though what might have been. This dark and evil city would have been spared had there been but ten righteous people. Despite the perversion, despite the scope of the evil, the city would have been spared for just ten righteous.
We live in a dark and evil land, amongst a dark and evil people. We too, in ourselves, are dark and evil. But we, by His grace, have a righteousness that is not rightly our own. We have a perfect righteousness. And by that, we can be the very reason God might spare our nation, our culture. We plot and we worry about how to take back this institution and that. We strategize and we compromise, that we might earn a place at the world’s table, for the sake of the world. When what we are called to do is to seek first His righteousness and His kingdom. What we are called to do is the right thing.
It is possible to retreat from the battle, and excuse our fear as pursuing personal righteousness. We call this folly pietism. I fear, however, that we are falling off the other side of the horse. Here piety is called pietism, and worldliness called being missional. The mission, however, is piety. Rescue your neighborhood. Rescue your city. Rescue your nation. Rescue those who are caught up in perversion. Rescue the Lots of the church. Do it by seeking His righteousness. Remnants save cities.
A given culture’s depravity isn’t measured simply by the percentage of Christians in that culture. Vital to the equation are two other factors. First, and most important, is how spiritually mature those Christians are. Corinth remained a sewer not because there weren’t enough Christians there, but because the Christians there weren’t Christian enough. But there is another important part of the calculus, the common grace of God in the lives of the lost. God sometimes gives over not only people but cultures to the depravity of their minds. Other times chastity, fidelity, and love are given a fighting chance.
It was, I believe, Ruth Graham who first said that if God doesn’t judge these United States, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. We are in the midst of a radical sea change over our understanding of marriage, especially as it relates to homosexuals. There was a time, not too long ago, that this didn’t much worry me. I figured, culturally speaking, that the homosexual agenda would get nowhere because there existed a grand coalition that wouldn’t budge. The allies were the church, which would stand with the Word of God and roundly condemn perversion as perversion, and the rest of the straight world that had enough common grace to recognize perversion when they saw it. Both fronts are in rapid retreat.
The church is retreating because the world has fired its biggest cannon against us, suggesting that we aren’t nice. We in turn have responded as we always do, loving the sinner, and quietly hoping the sin will go away. Now the only thing left in the closet is our prophet’s mantle.
The retreat of the straight world, however, is driven by a whole other cultural phenomenon, the internet. A curious combination of fiber optics and silicon has given us a technology that has carpet bombed the last great defense against sexual perversion, shame. The reason for the explosion of online pornography is simple enough. The Internet is the first pornography delivery system that doesn’t require any interaction with a live human being. The only thing standing between millions of people and oceans of pornography thirty years ago was the public shame of consuming it. That public shame is now gone. There is no longer a convenience store clerk, or video store clerk, or bouncer at the “Gentleman’s Club.”
Culturally speaking, we are treading the same path. We are slouching toward Gomorrah. Once, for instance, homosexuality was considered a gross perversion. Then it became an illness. Thirty years ago, when the psychiatric profession removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, the Christians howled in anger. Better we should have howled when it was first called an illness. Now homosexuality has gone mainstream, and homosexuals have become a protected class.
It will only get worse. We are culturally treading that path because we are individually treading that path. As more and more men get tangled in this web, we will more and more define deviancy downward. As homosexuals enjoy their moment in the sun, pedophiles wait impatiently in the wings, knowing that their time is coming. They are building momentum, as more and more men visit more and more websites, and sink lower and lower. If we were to empty every prison in America tomorrow, and then arrest every man consuming child pornography, there wouldn’t be enough room for them.
There is never a good time for the church to be worldly. But the least bad times are those when the world is at its most churchy. It is safer to mimic the mores of a decent culture than a decadent one. Which means in turn that it is all the more important to be set apart when the world is at its worst. Our standards are not their standards. We don’t define deviancy by the culture, but by the Word of God.
Now more than ever, we as a body must manifest chastity and fidelity. Now more than ever we must encourage one another onto righteousness. Now more than ever we must be a body that calls sin “sin,” and grace “grace.” Now more than ever we must believe the promises of God, who has told us not only that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, but that He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now more than ever we must eschew not only the filth that passes for normal all around us, but the despair that it will ever be like this. He can change men, and He can change cultures. He can and will make all His enemies a footstool. The darkness hates the light, but the light has already come into the world. Indeed we must be of good cheer, for that Light has already overcome the world.
When you have a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. In like manner, when you have a wrench everything looks like a bolt. Any given tool empowers us and tempts us. It makes easier the task for which the tool was designed, while tempting us to think that every problem will be solved by it, every question answered by it.
The computer is quite adept at, well, computing. The advent of the internet, while broadening radically how we use our computers, hasn’t changed its capacity for computing. Indeed some of the niftiest tricks our computers/web surfboards can do is compute our own surfing style, and the surfing habits of others. I suspect that blogs would never have taken off were it not for sundry attached diagnostic tools. Facebook, Twitter, ad nauseam likewise, are powered more by the like button, and the size of our friends list than what they actually communicate. What fun is sharing our thoughts with the world unless we can know how many hits, how many “likes” we have had, or where we rank in the polls down at WordPress? Are we prompted to get busy and save the world from errant teacher X through our Discernment Ministry blog when we see people are checking in from Montana, Monterey and Mozambique? Soon enough our message is being driven by the numbers, just like the message of that slick, worldly preacher we’re faithfully seeking to take down.
One need not, however, have the Grinch-sized heart of the attack blogger to fall into this fallacy. We are all tempted to measure our success by tangible numbers, both individually and corporately. Some years I read a headline that noted that Bible apps, in all their iterations, were being downloaded more frequently than Angry Birds. I’m sure that was a good thing. I’m just not sure how good a thing that was. It may well be that the best thing about it is that people finally got tired of Angry Birds. That the Bible topped it, however, means about as much as the certain truth more homes have Bibles in them than Cabbage Patch dolls. It does tell us something about our spiritual state. But I’m not sure it’s good news.
First, the giddy celebration that “we” beat Angry Birds betrayed a profoundly unhealthy and a-historical understanding of the church. We’re not in a race with any software, any technology, any fad. To even acknowledge such a “competition” is to lose. We celebrate the faith once delivered. Jesus isn’t the newest kid on the block, here to topple today’s pop star from his throne. He is the Ancient of Days.
Second, the progress of the kingdom, the progress of the sanctification of the church, of the nation, of my family or myself, cannot be measured electronically. Bible downloads isn’t a measure. Bible reading isn’t even a measure. The fruit of the Spirit, that’s the measure. Becoming more like Jesus, that’s the measure. Dying to self, that’s the measure. So far the geniuses down at Google have not come up with a string of algorithms to measure any of those.
Our desire is not that the Bible should topple Angry Birds. Our goal is not that our favorite rock star preacher would trend on twitter. Our hope is the sure and certain truth that our Lord is bringing all things under subjection, is conquering all His enemies, including all the folly that remains within His own. We don’t need diagnostics to know how the story ends- Jesus wins.
