Tonight, 7 eastern, we conclude our ABCs of Theology Study, looking at Z is for Omega. All are welcome in our home or on FB live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We pray you’ll join us.
I confess that I am one of the millions of sophomoric Christians who, along the way, thought it a brilliant idea to grow the kingdom of God by blending together the coolness of the world and the holiness of the faith. Exhibit a little charm, skate a little close to what even we would consider relatively minor sins, keep up to date on sports and celebrity news and hey presto goats would get herded by droves right into the sheep fold. It took me far too long to discern that this approach was not only an affront to Jesus but counter-productive. Nothing earns the contempt of the cool kids like desperately seeking their favor.
It was my habit for a few years as a kid to pray that God would allow me to be an All-Pro for the Steelers, so I could give Him honor and praise. Then I asked Him to make me a rock star, so I could shape the worldview of the young. As I got older I asked Him to help me write the Great American Novel, as a means of growing the kingdom. Then I noticed what all three of these plans had in common- I was volunteering to be universally loved and fabulously wealthy, all for the sake of my Redeemer.
When Jesus warns us that the world will hate us as it first hated Him, He wasn’t laying down a challenge to see if we could do better. He was preparing us and establishing for us a sound measure of our faithfulness. If the world loves us, in short, we’re doing it wrong.
That said, I would argue there are certain stereotypes unbelievers attach to believers that we should push against, not as a strategy for winning them, but as part of our growth in grace. Consider for instance our reputation for being prideful. It’s true we might hear such a charge simply by virtue of affirming that something is true. But it is also a charge we might hear because it can be true. We do in fact think too highly of ourselves. We do tend to think that what separates us from the unbeliever is something good in us, rather than the grace of God.
The same principle applies to the accusation that we are judgmental. Often that charge comes because we are standing on the Word of God, affirming His law. In such a context we need to simply grin and bear it. It is also true, however, that we can be prone to forget, when dealing with sinners, that not only such once were we, but that we still battle against our own flesh. We can present the gospel as a way of life that we have mastered rather than the rescuing of our life by the Master.
The short answer is we need to grow in grace and wisdom, with our eyes looking to please Him rather than them. As we do so we may very well surprise them, and be given an opportunity to tell them about Who is at work in our lives.
Our calling is to preach the whole counsel of God, and to do that, we have to preach the whole counsel of God.
But there is still more to it. Systematic theology reminds us that the Bible is one book. Indeed, because the God who wrote it is one (Deut. 6:4), it is likewise one. We cannot and must not pit one passage against another, as if John 3:16 can be trumped by or can trump John 3:3. Neither, however, can John 3:16 trump or be trumped by Psalm 14:3. In order to preach a passage rightly, it must be preached in context. Context, however, isn’t simply the verse or chapter before and the verse or chapter after; it is the totality of the Word of God. Thus, when we preach a particular passage, if we do it right, we actually are preaching the whole counsel of God. We preach the whole Bible every time we preach any passage of the Bible. We cannot rightly explain the love of God if we do not include an understanding of the wrath of God. And in like manner, we cannot rightly explain the wrath of God if we do not include the love of God. The Word of God, paradoxically, is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
But how can we capture the whole counsel of the Lord without swallowing the entire day of the Lord in the process? It’s hard enough to preach one small passage without having various notifications chiming away to let us know folks might miss their tee time without having at the same time to preach the whole Bible.
The solution comes when we remember that we not only ought to preach the passages as they come and that we not only ought to teach the whole of the Bible whenever we preach any of the Bible, but that we must always preach Christ and Him crucified. This, however, isn’t the third point in this written sermon on sermons. Instead, it subsumes the other two points. That is, there is one hobby horse we must never dismount or allow ourselves to be bucked from. The one message that all the Bible proclaims, from cover to cover, is the story of Jesus Christ.
Thus, when Paul boldly declared that he would preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified, he did not mean that all of his sermons would be taken from the last pages of the gospels. Paul was certainly familiar with the end of the gospel of Luke, where we find the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Our tendency when we come to this passage is to look at it in the context of the hidden Jesus. That is, we want to understand how it was that Jesus was not recognized and how He seemingly disappeared. What ought to fascinate us, however, is the glimpse we are given of the revealed Jesus.
On the road to Emmaus, Jesus gave the one sermon above all others that I would like to have heard. Beginning with Moses, we are told, Jesus explained all of the Old Testament. Here was an Old Testament survey lecture given by the Master Himself. But the great thing about this sermon wasn’t so much that it explained the Old Testament, but that it explained Jesus. That is, Jesus preached rightly. As we are told, He “expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
The book of Genesis then, isn’t ultimately only the story of the Creation or of the patriarchs. It is also the story of Jesus. The book of Exodus doesn’t exist merely so that we would understand how God’s people came to the Promised Land, but also so that we would understand the Promised One. The book of Leviticus isn’t simply a collection of arcane rules regarding sacrifices. It is also an exposition of the Ruler over all things who is our one sacrifice. The book of Esther, we are told, doesn’t even mention God’s name. But it, too, if we would rightly understand it, speaks of God’s Son. Of course we weren’t there. We didn’t hear that sermon. But we know at least this much, that the story was all about Jesus.
In the church where I serve, we find it rather easy to remember to preach Christ and Him crucified. We remember to do this because every week we remember to remember after the sermon. That is, we preach not only the text, not only the whole of the Bible, not only Christ and Him crucified, but we preach also the table. After we hear the Word preached, we eat and we drink the Word visible. One of the advantages of celebrating the table of the Lord every week is that it reminds us of what it is we are to preach. The table, which without the preaching of the Word would just be a table, adorns the preaching of the Word, adding a means of grace to the means of grace of preaching.
Even after the preaching of the Word, we must labor not to forget how and why we have preached. Though it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, from time to time a congregant will greet me after the service and say, “That was a great sermon, pastor.” I always respond by saying, “I get to preach a great Gospel.” It is for this reason that our fathers were known to place on their pulpits this written reminder of the very purpose of preaching: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” May we honor those fathers in our sermons, and better still, honor the Jesus whom they preached.
Do we not tend to see doubt as something negative? Something to avoid or overcome? Doubt is what we writers and editors, when we hang out together and tell stories about the rest of you, call a “transitive” verb. These are verbs not that suffer from gender dysphoria, but that require an object. You can run, or hum without an object. But you cannot throw, or love or hate without an object. Everybody, as the saying goes, needs someone to love. Doubt too requires an object. You can’t just doubt; you have to doubt something. Some things are good to doubt, others not so much. If you receive an email from the Namibian oil minister’s widow offering to give you millions if you help her, that you should doubt. The Word of God, on the other hand, is something we should never doubt.
When the object of our doubt is ourselves, we are likely in a good spot. We tend toward overconfidence in ourselves, in terms of our knowledge, our character and our calling. GK Chesterton put it this way:
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition and settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
Mark Twain had his own insight when he wrote, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you. It’s what you do know that just isn’t so.” We are a credulous people, believing anything and often its opposite. I think of this every time the polls change. I can see how 55% of those polled approve of the President. I can see how 45% disapprove. What I can’t see if how those two numbers can flop with the same President in the space of a week. Who are the 10% who cheer on the President one day and turn on him the next?
There is real truth out there, truth we can actually know. We should not doubt that. We should, however, be unafraid to acknowledge we don’t know all of it. We should not race like Richard Petty on our way to a conclusion. We should not allow peer pressure to push us into embracing the party line. We should never convict others when we know we don’t know the whole story. We should at one and the same cherish and spread abroad far and wide these three words, “I don’t know.”
You may upset your friends. If, however, they get too upset, get new friends. The ones you have now are looking for allies and yes men, not friends. At least, that’s what I think you should do. I can’t say for sure.
The great thing about truth truth is that a. it is knowable and b. doesn’t require us to believe it in order for it to be true. It is unfazed when we are certain and wrong, but also not insulted when we are unsure. This much I do know- my heart, like everyone else’s is deceitful and wicked. My Redeemer is not. He is not to be doubted. He loves me.
No. One can certainly get wealthy by sinning. One can certainly sin while being wealthy. But it is surely not a sin to be wealthy. Though few would be so crass as to express such a sentiment, it nevertheless often reveals itself, ironically among the wealthy. Wealth, remember, is a relative term. Most of us like to think of ourselves as somewhere safely in the middle. But I suspect 99% of you reading this are, in terms of wealth, are in the 1% of the wealthiest humans to ever walk on this planet.
Wealth, like wine, is a blessing from God that can be misused, that can bring with it a bevy of temptations peculiar to it. One temptation common to many of God’s blessings is that we forget they are God’s blessings. That is, we lose sight of the giver of the gift in loving the gift. Every good gift, however, should be seen as a window through which we behold the grace and the beauty of the Giver. Wealth has this added danger- it can encourage us to lose sight of our dependence of God.
Which brings us to how to rightly respond to the gift of wealth. First, give thanks, knowing that it comes from the hand of God. Were we better able to recognize that we are all in the 1% we would begin to push back against the envy that crushes gratitude. We see wealth as wicked because we think it’s something other people have that we don’t. But to 99% of those who ever lived, we are the other people.
Second, recognize that we are but stewards of what God has given us. Better yet, recognize that you are the steward of what God has given you, and I am the steward of what God has given me. Sometimes we use the truth that we are stewards of what is God’s as a pretext to judge how others handle what God has given them. We think this one shouldn’t have such a big house but should be financing missions, and that one shouldn’t have such fine clothes but should be supporting the local soup kitchen. We pride ourselves into thinking we could steward the money God gave the other guy to care for than he does.
We can debate on the requirements God makes of His stewards, whether the tithe is still binding, to whom it should go, gross or net. What we must not do is add to God’s requirements. Nor subtract from them. That is, not only is it not a sin to enjoy the wealth God has given you, it is likely a sin to not enjoy it. God commands His people in Deuteronomy 14:26- “And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.”
Which means the key is gratitude, not how much or how little we have been given to steward. We need not repent of our wealth. We likely need to repent for our failure to recognize it, and give thanks to the Giver. Wealth is no more proof of greed than poverty is proof of laziness. Work hard. Remember your dependence. Give thanks. And enjoy.
It is because we are saved by grace that we sinners are able to confess publicly that we are sinners. It is because we are sinners, however, that we are so quick to get defensive anytime someone accuses us of a specific sin. Why the disconnect? Because being a sinner is a condition, a universal condition, an oddly antiseptic descriptor of humanity. Sinning, however, that requires acknowledging that we have done wrong. And we can’t have that.
Years ago I wrote a brief piece wherein I argued that practicing a particular voting strategy was a sin. A friend replied to my piece with an argument and a judgment. The argument was simple enough- unless I was prepared to quote chapter and verse, to provide a proof-text, I had no business calling said strategy a sin. The judgment was this- that my piece was wrong, uncaring, harsh, judgmental, reprehensible and not so good at all. Happily, he refrained from calling my piece sin, lacking a proof-text and all.
That was when I first learned of our aversion to call sin sin, especially when it is directed at us. Sin is vile, cosmic rebellion, worthy of God’s eternal judgment. But what it’s not is unusual, rare. While we in one sense of course ought to be ashamed of our sins, we ought also to remember that the only way for them to be covered is if we repent of them. And to do that, we have to acknowledge them. Getting our back up when someone points out a sin, I fear, exposes the all too living Pelagian inside of us. We need to put him to death. We need to own our sin.
Some years ago I received a letter, well, a copy of a letter. An old friend had written my then boss to point out her unhappiness at some of my sins, and was honorable enough to send me a copy as well. Truth be told, it stung. A lot. I went through a long list of replies I wanted to give. I wanted to object that her characterization of me was unfair, dated, unbalanced. As the sting remained I begin to wonder over why it hurt so bad. The answer was staring me in the face- it’s because the accusations were true. Specifically she faulted me for a propensity to be flippant and sarcastic. If, to you, that doesn’t sound like me, you must be new here.
The defenses I concocted were true enough- that tone is hard to grasp with mere written words, that she was hearing me through ears that knew me better when I was younger, that sarcasm has its place, that a well spoken prophetic word can be just a subtle but important shade away from flippancy. All true. Just like the accusation. Better to own the sin, confess the sin, to seek forgiveness. After all, the man who defends himself has a fool for a client.
What, after all, are we afraid of? My heavenly Father loves me. He forgives me. His love and forgiveness are immutable. They do not ebb and flow based on my obedience in a given day. Rather they are built upon the Rock of His Son’s perfect life and sacrifice. I can own my sin, because He owned my sin. It must be my reputation with others I’m trying to protect. It must be their approval I fear losing. That sounds like me, a sinner. Better, by His grace, to back down.
